-
Bob PockrassNASCAR
Joey Logano heard the boos at Martinsville Speedway and soaked in the moment.
Considering people once said Logano didn’t have the talent to race in the NASCAR Cup series, boos will do just fine, thank you very much.
“I had a whole stadium booing me,” Logano said of last month’s playoff race. “That’s a weird feeling, by the way.
“You know what I think about when I hear that? How many people can actually say they experienced that? That’s a cool feeling. No one can say they’ve done that.”
When he continued to struggle in his fourth year at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2012, Logano never could have envisioned a path where boos rained on him as he competed for a title. He knew he was out of a ride, and rides like the one at JGR don’t come around all that often. One chance, let alone the three chances he would have from 2014 to ’18 to win a championship, seemed to be as much of a likelihood as him being booed by entire stadiums.
But when AJ Allmendinger failed a drug test in July 2012, all of a sudden a ride opened up with another one of NASCAR’s elite teams. Brad Keselowski had seen enough of Logano in the Xfinity Series to know he had talent and just needed a new opportunity. At the same time, Pennzoil, whose previous drivers were Allmendinger, Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick, wanted a driver who would provide a little less drama off the track.
Team owner Roger Penske called Keselowski and they talked.
“I told him that he needed to hire Joey and Joey was the right guy and he would take the 22 program and make it a success and be able to run for race wins and championships and give it the stability I think he was looking for,” Keselowski said.
“I remember talking to Mr. Penske about that for some time and working all that out and him just kind of soaking it in and then eventually saying, ‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’ … I felt pretty confident he had a lot of natural talent and would learn in time how to apply it.”
Todd Gordon, who was crew chief for Allmendinger, assumed the role of trying to turn a driver with potential into a driver who could reach his potential.
“The performance that he was at in the 20 Cup car obviously wasn’t the level that we thought that he could get to,” Gordon said. “But in watching him in the Xfinity Series, I felt like from an outsider looking in that he and the 20 car could actually ‑‑ he could outrun Kyle [Busch] half the time in the 18 car.
“So I felt like his ability to perform at a high level was equal to that of Kyle within the organization and just didn’t find the chemistry that they had on the Cup side.”
For Logano, it was the perfect fit. And maybe most importantly, far from the imperfect fit of joining JGR to replace Cup champion Tony Stewart while not having much Xfinity experience and representing a sponsor (The Home Depot) that certainly didn’t match with the interests of an 18-year-old. Looking back on it now, it seems ridiculous to think Logano would have worked out at JGR.
“You don’t even know what you don’t know — you don’t know where to start fixing things because you don’t have any history, you don’t have enough mistakes in your back pocket that you’ve learned from,” Logano said about his struggles at JGR. “You’ve just got to go through it. … It was, ‘I don’t know what to do.’
“Now you know the right things to look for, the right things to say, the right feeling to get [in the car]. That’s years of experience.”
But it also would have been a far stretch to think that Logano would win 18 races in what is now his six years at Penske. In NASCAR’s new elimination-style playoff format, he has advanced to the championship round in 2014, 2016 and again here in 2018. He is the only one of the four contenders competing Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway who hasn’t won the title. Harvick (2014), Kyle Busch (2015) and Martin Truex Jr. (2017) have conquered the system. Logano has not.
And he isn’t worried about whether he will in terms of his career and legacy.
“Championships do define careers some, but it doesn’t define everything,” Logano said. “There are some great race car drivers, some of the best — Mark Martin comes to mind — that I think of as a champion in a lot of different ways.”
Logano said he needs to have no regrets about how much he has prepared and whether he did everything he could to win a title.
“If it works, great; if it doesn’t, we move on to next year and try again,” Logano said.
That attitude is partially a product of those JGR years. Life as a race car driver is something he needs to be grateful for, and Logano pledged he will remain grateful if he makes the finals every other year and still comes up short.
“I can be,” Logano said. “I don’t want to. I want to make it every year and win every time. … We don’t want to lose. We’re going to give it all we can. We learned from every time we’ve been there and I look forward to it and [am] excited about it.
“You get nervous when you don’t know what’s going to happen. Now I know what is going to happen somewhat, as much as I can. I don’t want to go through the situation of coming in second. It stinks when you go to the banquet and you see all the cool things happening and you know you’re the first loser.”
Things haven’t always gone rosy at Team Penske. Logano failed to make the playoffs in 2017. He credits his JGR days for helping him keep the faith that things will get better and the process will make him stronger.
“It’s never easy. It’s never fun going through tough times,” said the 28-year-old Logano. “But I know that God is leading me in the right direction, and I put faith in that it is going to come out OK.
“It doesn’t mean it’s not hard. It doesn’t mean I’m not stressed out. But I also know that if it wasn’t what happened early in my career, I wouldn’t be in position that I am with Team Penske.”
Logano believes he was pushed into Cup too early, but he doesn’t mind it now that he knows what came from it. He didn’t have the faith he has now, partly because of maturity, partly because his nonprofit foundation has put him in touch with people going through much more difficult times.
“I would say I probably wasn’t as strong as a man then or my faith either way,” Logano said. “I was young. I was 18 years old. You’ve got to find yourself, how to handle situations, how to handle people, how to handle your own mental mind.”
That doesn’t mean Logano has no regrets. He still regrets the comment he made about Harvick at Pocono about how Harvick’s wife wears the firesuit in the family.
“I took the higher road most of the time — there was one time I didn’t and I regret it and that was Pocono when I said something and made it personal,” Logano said. “I should never have done that. I regret that to do this day. But I learned from that.”
But didn’t that earn him some respect of not being pushed around?
“I don’t think it did,” Logano said. “It’s not who I am.”
Who is Logano? A driver trying to soak up the moment and enjoy it while also winning. Boos can come along for the ride. His crew chief understands why.
“You have to look at it and say that if people are making noise, whether it’s cheers or boos, that means that you’ve done something and you’re competitive,” Gordon said. “I think the great part about NASCAR racing is the passion of our fan base, and it’s passionate in both directions. … Volume speaks for what you’re able to accomplish, not necessarily the words that come out of it.”
And what Logano says speaks volumes. He is a silver-lining person.
“I love every minute of life,” Logano said. “It’s awesome. How do you not? It’s great. My life is ridiculous — I drive race cars for a living. … Having a positive attitude is contagious, so people around you get excited and great things happen.
“I’m generally just happy. I get very competitive. I hate to lose. I am not always smiling in the race car or a competitive working environment. But I can flip that switch. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s going to affect your performance.”
Even the boos?
“I always remember Talladega when Jeff Gordon won Talladega and he had a bunch of beer cans being thrown at him,” Logano said.
“We won there against [Dale Earnhardt] Junior and the same thing happened. And I was like, ‘Whoa. Cool. Better keep the window net up next time.'”