It may have taken three l-o-n-g months of offseason for redemption, but there’s no redemption quite like celebrating a Daytona 500 victory.
And Joey Logano’s No. 22 Penske Racing team couldn’t have been more up for the challenge.
After a stellar, career best five-win 2014 season and berth in the NASCAR’s Final Four, Logano’s shot at his first Sprint Cup Series championship was — at the very least — complicated by a couple of pit-road miscues, including a late-race pit stop that went miserably wrong in the waning laps of the Homestead-Miami Speedway season finale.
Longtime jack man Ray Gallahan — the most experienced member of Logano’s pit crew — had trouble getting the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford jacked up properly resulting in a longer pit stop, ultimately hurting any chances of a race win.
"Everyone’s wanting to make a big deal out of that, but really it was one point in a whole playbook of a year,” Logano’s crew chief Todd Gordon said Tuesday. "Unfortunately it was what it was at Homestead. But it was pretty much put in the rearview mirror to start with right off the bat in the offseason and we’ve worked forward and focused on ’15.
"I think the pit crew did a phenomenal job Sunday and it’s got to be good for them. We made gains on pit road on every stop and they performed well. Honestly, the jack man, Ray Gallahan, he’s a Florida native, so that was a pretty special win, to win back home at Daytona and it be the 500."
As far as Gordon and Logano are concerned, last year’s flub is a distant memory and was only days after the season ended. Of course, that’s even easier to feel when you’re basking in the glory of winning the sport’s biggest race.
As badly as Gallahan felt in November, he couldn’t have felt much better than Sunday evening — the crew still wet with champagne, confetti sticking to their firesuits and smiles as wide as the famous Daytona frontstretch long into the night.
He told ESPN.com the next day, "You’ve got to embrace it. If you run from it, if you try to pretend like it didn’t happen, you’ll never get over it. You’ll always try to hide from people wanting to talk to you about it.
"You almost have got to attack it like a pit stop and try to own it. It’s made me better. I wish it didn’t happen. But it definitely has made me better."
It’s exactly the philosophy Gordon used: last November’s mishap was a learning opportunity not a point to dwell on. Perspective helps.
"It was one particular play,” Gordon said. "If you look at any professional sport, if someone misses that last 3-pointer attempt with the buzzer going off, we don’t chastise him for it. One play shouldn’t define a season. Unfortunately, it did in that case. … whether it was car-side, or performance-side.
"We’ve identified all the things we could do to make that situation better and I think we’ve done that in the offseason. We’ve used it as a productive tool to try to identify what we can do better and minimize those challenges and I think we had a successful kickoff. We had a flawless day on pit road and that definitely added to the ability to finish off the Daytona 500 the way we did."
"It’s a lot easier to refocus people than to re-motivate people,” Gordon said with a slight laugh. "At the end of 2013 we had a lot of momentum in our first year with Joey. And we carried it over to ’14 and carried it through the season and were definitely thought of as a title contender from all the competitors and the media so great to kick off this season and pull some of that ’14 momentum forward. We need to carry it forward through this season as well.
"To me, it’s a huge advantage winning this race and the 88 team [with 2014 Daytona 500 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr.] had it last year,” Gordon explained. "If you look, they came forward into the next three races very competitively. I think you got a great reward because you’re the first to have the reduction in anxiety and you can say, ‘I got a win.’ "
The No. 22 road and pit crew stayed an extra day in Daytona Beach this week getting a front row seat as their Daytona 500 winning car was officially put on display for a year in the Daytona 500 Experience.
"It’s pretty cool. Everyone goes through the emotions differently, but winning the Daytona 500 is something you should stop and cherish,” Gordon said. "But they aren’t going to push the next week’s race off. So getting back and in routine to prepare for Atlanta and what we can learn with the new packages is in the forefront. They came into work today focused hard on how we can go win Atlanta.”
As for Logano, he’s full steam ahead as well, insisting he’d rather focus on what happened this week than what occurred three months ago.
"It really didn’t stay in my mind that long, you move on,” Logano said. "It’s history. It’s past. You focus on the future. If you dwell on the past, you’ll never move forward.
"Obviously you’re frustrated at the end of that race. The team stuck together, their attitude was awesome over the offseason. They worked so hard to become better. We used it as a positive, how to motivate ourselves to be a better team.
"I’m confident as a driver I know I have the best team out there,” Logano continued. "Whether it’s the road crew or the pit crew, I know they’re the best team out there.
"As long as we stay together as a team, win or lose as a team, that’s what makes a strong team, you know, is people that live and die together. You do it.
"It’s really cool to see how they reacted over the offseason and used it as a positive."
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A crew member adjusts a track bar in the garage. NASCAR’s rules package now allows drivers to make this adjustment from the cockpit during races.
