Joey Logano has his long-awaited moment
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — The bewilderment washed over his face, and for a second — just a single moment — everything around Joey Logano stopped.
No, of course everything didn’t actually stop. As much as he might have liked it to. You can’t freeze time, you know?
The crowd slowly enveloping him at Homestead-Miami Speedway kept swarming, pushing in, growing and growing in every direction. The thick stench of burnt rubber endured, the odor as overwhelming as the scene unfolding on track.
Rain fell, fans cheered, beers cracked, the whole shebang.
But right before Logano went onstage to properly accept his first NASCAR Cup Series championship, before he could hug his wife or kiss his son or do any of those “championship things” he’d always dreamed of doing, Logano paused.
Disbelief. Awe. Shock, even?
What exactly just happened?
No words required, but you could read it all on Logano’s tear-stained face.
“Man, I don’t even know how to put this in words,” Logano said.
Oh right, about those
tears. They’re natural, of course, especially when you finally achieve your life’s dream. Think about that: How many people actually accomplish the one thing they’ve always wanted, the one thing they’ve sought for nearly three decades?
That’s especially so when you consider how close Logano came to never reaching this point. He’d twice before been a championship contender, both in 2014 and 2016, one of the four best drivers
in the sport left vying for a title ... and came up empty both times.
Then last season, he missed the playoffs entirely. There weren’t sufficient adjectives to describe how awful, miserable, or truly terrible that feeling was, that sense that he had failed (although those three were certainly three of Logano’s preferred ones in the buildup to Sunday’s race).
And now, this.
“It took a little bit longer than I wanted it to,” Logano said with a grin after the race, “but now we’re here.”
Even earlier this season, as recent as 10 or 15 races ago, it didn’t seem like Logano had any sense being in this moment. A win at Talladega in the regular season got him into the playoffs, sure, but who has ever counted Talladega as an fair barometer of success? Rather, it was, ‘Oh, well Logano’s back in’ — never, ‘Oh, did you see that Talladega win? Logano’s going to race for a ‘ship.’
Never.
But Logano, the 28-year-old who has made his fair share of enemies in 10 years of Cup racing, didn’t hear any of that. He tuned out all the doubt or hate or whatever you want to call it, and just focused on the only thing he could control.
Himself.