Any way you slice it
Underdog or not, Logano has shot at NASCAR title
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Joey Logano is the outlier among the drivers who will battle for the title in the NASCAR Cup Series season finale Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Although it was no surprise he made the 16-driver field when the playoffs started in mid-September, Logano wasn’t expected to be in the mix 10 races later at the end of it all. That changed in late October, when he used his bumper to move 2017 season champion Martin Truex Jr. out of his way to forcefully snag a win at Martinsville Speedway, and with it a spot in NASCAR’s version of the final four.
The move aggravated Truex, who vowed not to allow Logano to win the championship.
“He may have won the battle,” Truex fumed then, “but he ain’t winning the damn war.”
A week later, Aric Almirola made a similar promise because he was rankled Logano refused to cut him any slack on the track at Texas Motor Speedway.
Time and again, it seems, Logano finds himself in the center of high-profile spats. A decade of dealing with these silly little slights, being pushed around on and off the track, has taught Logano how to tune it out. He goes into Sunday’s race — where the top finisher among Logano, Truex, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick will win the big prize — convinced he’s finally going to win his first Cup Series title in his 10th season on the top-tier circuit.
“I said 15 weeks ago we were an underdog and I would be surprised if we made it to the final four,” Logano said of himself and his Team Penske No. 22 Ford crew. “Now I feel like we are the favorites to win this thing. It’s crazy how things change.”
He may feel as if he’s the favorite, but Logano is clearly the underdog of this group. His performances were mediocre most of the season, making him an afterthought compared to the so-called Big Three of Busch, Harvick and Truex, a trio of former series champions who dominated this year’s regular season.
Logano, though, mastered a path through the playoffs and could pull off the upset of his career.
It would be vindication for the driver tagged as NASCAR’s next superstar by Hall of Famer Mark Martin when Logano was just about to turn 18 and be eligible to race at the national level. He was nicknamed “Sliced Bread” because he was allegedly “the best thing since,” and the expectations were enormous by the time he made his debut.
Logano is by nature happygo-lucky, and when he made it to the big leagues, his parents traveled the circuit with him. That became a bone of contention among Logano’s peers, who resented his clean path into NASCAR and found him an easy target for scuffles on and off the track.
Then he was pushed into the Cup Series way ahead of schedule because Joe Gibbs Racing, the team that groomed him, had an unexpected opening. It made Logano a target for many high-profile drivers, including Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart and others.
Drama after drama would have broken some, but Logano has rebounded every time.
When JGR could no longer wait for him to produce — he netted more than 40 top-10 finishes but just two victories for them — Logano landed with Roger Penske’s organization prior to the 2013 season and has won 18 races since changing teams. He has qualified for championship eligibility in the finale three of the past five seasons, and he was the favorite to win the title in 2015, but a feud with Matt Kenseth led to Kenseth wrecking Logano out of an automatic berth into the finale.
Logano was in a spectacular crash while racing Carl Edwards for the victory the next year, and a penalty kept the No. 22 team out of the playoffs last season. Logano was the first driver locked into the finale this year, despite just one regular-season victory.
When he moved Truex out of his way in the final turn at Martinsville last month, Truex was furious. Logano, who later, was adamant he had to take that opportunity and couldn’t risk not going for broke, was booed as he took the checkered flag.
“I love his passion. The one thing you’ve got to appreciate out of Joey is that he races, he gives 100 percent,” said Todd Gordon, Logano’s crew chief. “He’s racing all the time, and that’s a great attribute of his. He’s up on it. You never have to question where we are, if it’s through practice or through any session, you’re getting 100 percent out of him.”
What happened last Sunday at ISM Raceway near Phoenix in the penultimate playoff race seems to back up Logano’s choice to be aggressive. A flat tire caused him to crash out of the race early, and if Logano hadn’t won at Martinsville, the wreck would have prevented him from making the finale.
So he paid no mind to Truex’s anger — and even less to Almirola’s assertion Logano should have cut other playoff drivers some slack because Logano had nothing on the line once he was locked into a championship bid.
“Our sport was built on tough racing, and I’m going to race hard,” Logano said. “I’m a racer. That’s what I am. I’ve got one gear when I get in a race car … it’s to go win the race. To be a good race car driver, a lot of times you have to be selfish — you’ve got to think about what’s best for your race team, and I think that’s kind of the approach I’ve taken over the years.
“Once I started racing that way, I’ve won a lot more races.”
While his habit of altercations has cost him at times, Logano also believes one of the benefits is that they “make you tough as nails.”
“I’ve learned how to handle situations,” he said. “You’ve got to go through things to learn things sometimes, and you just have to learn things the hard way. It’s not the fun way to learn things the hard way, but you do and not only does that help you on the race track, but for the rest of my life I’ll be able to take those lessons with me.”