Birth Date: May 24, 1990 Hometown:
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At 29 years old, Joey Logano already has 200 top-10 nishes in his Cup
Series career plus 54 wins split across different circuits.
His 2019 defense of his 2018 Championship ultimately ended at Phoenix
with Denny Hamlin and eventual Champion Kyle Busch beating him into the
Championship 4.
Consistency has made the wunderkind prove his potential, and he was one of
just two drivers to nish every race in 2019.
Race fans watched Joey Logano grow up. He arrived at NASCAR in 2008 as
an impressionable, if not naive, 18-year-old from Connecticut, and he certainly
went through some growing pains.
Despite all the hits and misses along the way, Logano seemed destined to
being on top. In fact, NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Mark Martin gave him the
nickname “Sliced Bread” years before he was old enough to compete at the
NASCAR level. It was a nickname that was hard to live up to, but one that
eventually was proven true.
“You’re 18 years old or 19 or 20, and this is some pretty big stuff for a
teenager to be able to go through, sitting up here, talking to you guys, trying to
handle all those situations,” Logano said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I still
don’t really know what I’m doing, but just have a better idea of it, I guess.
“It was really hard. But like I said, it makes you stronger in so many
different ways.”
In 2020, the No. 22 Ford Mustang will have the expertise of Paul Wolfe as his
crew chief. The duo has quickly developed a chemistry.
“The short time Joey and I have been together here,” Wolfe told Yahoo!
Sports. “…it really gets you thinking about things that just kind of became
natural for you when you’ve been with someone, with a team for 10 years,
just the way you go about business every day and how you look at things and
your approach into a race weekend.”
In Logano’s 2018 Championship season, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch both
won more races eight apiece but Logano came alive when it counted
most during the NASCAR Playoffs, and particularly the Championshipdeciding
season nale at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. He qualied for
the Playoffs with a win at Talladega in April, and he got to the Championship 4
with a victory last October at Martinsville.
Once he got to South Florida, his No. 22 Ford was untouchable. He blew past
Martin Truex Jr. with 12 laps remaining and ran away with a 1.725-second
victory that made car owner Roger Penske a stock-car Champion for the
second time.
“Those are all special milestones, and for me, 33 Championships that gives
us at Team Penske, and certainly to get the Indianapolis race, the Southern
500, and now to think that we’re the Champion of 2018 for the NASCAR
Cup Series is something that I never imagined it at the beginning,” Penske
said after Logano’s special season (Penske’s other Cup Championship
came in 2012).
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Wolfe and Logano will be in the garage together on February 8 for the
rst practices at Daytona, but they are trying to use technology to create a
synergy that they can easily carry over to the real track.
“It takes just the whole team to do this,” Logano said. “It’s a team win for
everyone, and I know it sounds so cliché, but man, it really is. It’s just it
takes an army to do this.”
Wolfe added the following in his conversation with Yahoo!, “The simulators
have come a long way and they still could be better and we’re working
with them to try and make them better. But there’s denitely one thing that
it is good for and it’s just that communication piece and making changes
and trying things and just talking on the radio to understand a little bit of
the lingo.”
Two of Logano’s most-notable moments came at Martinsville. In 2015 when
Matt Kenseth purposely crashed Logano as a payback for their run-in two
weeks earlier at Kansas. Kenseth was benched by NASCAR for the nal
two races of the year; Logano was knocked out of the Playoffs.
Two years ago, Logano used the same bump-and-run pass on Martin Truex
Jr. that’s been common for years at the half-mile short track.
“You’re right there at it, I get it,” Logano said. “It’s racing. It’s hard. Not
everyone is happy about it. There’s going to be people that love it and
people that don’t. That’s up to them to decide.
“I know what I had to do to get my team into the Championship 4 and
ultimately win the race.”
Will Wolfe put him over the top again? Time will tell.
2019 FEATURED DRIVERS
JOEY LOGANO
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