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Bob PockrassNASCAR
HOMESTEAD, Florida – Joey Logano replaced one of the most intimidating and fiercest drivers in the NASCAR Cup series 10 years ago.
The 18-year-old boy replacing Tony Stewart was not Tony Stewart.
He possessed a resume that included many victories, but only one out of 19 Xfinity series experience races. He joined a team on which the former driver knew what he wanted in a car and, if not, he was carrying the car on his shoulder with an attitude that has earned dozens of races and two championships.
Joey Logano proved that NASCAR's playoff system was performance-oriented towards the end of the year as he turned a regular season into a first-ever NASCAR Cup Series win.
Barney Visser of Furniture Row Racing said it was always easy to smile after Martin Truex Jr. finished one place in front of a second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series title.
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This new kid with all the hype did not know what he wanted. As he likes to say, he did not even know what he did not know. It has been debated and veterans have jumped on its insecurity. He was a fresh meat for the competition, which devoured, intimidated and pushed him. His team lost confidence in him.
"I humbled myself pretty quickly," Logano said Sunday after winning the NASCAR Cup Series title. "I guess the word" humiliated "is the word I do not know, I got beaten up, I got a lot of jostling, I was not fast, I had no respect I think it breaks your confidence in you pretty quickly, and you have to somehow dig in there.
"Every sport is a mental sport, so you really need to know how to be strong again and dig holes."
The only grace that saved us during those years of unforgiving suffering was the Xfinity series, where he won 17 races in four years.
But this series of cut? Gosh, was it a different story? He had two wins but never finished higher than 16th.
Joey Logano, after four years at Joe Gibbs Racing, knew that he was absent in 2012, and it was once he did not even know he would find another seat in the garage of the cup.
"I was expecting to go out and win … and I just got my butt on a plateau," Logano said. "It was hard, I often felt very weak and collapsed, and it was hard.
"You know, when you're confused, you do not know how to feel better.You are 18, 19 or 20 years old, and it's a big blow for a teenager to get through, sitting here, at you guys talk to you [in the media], trying to handle all these situations. I did not know what I was doing. "
He found a new home at Team Penske in 2013, in part by chance when AJ Allmendinger was fired after failing NASCAR's drug test. And with the new life of his career, he has changed. That nice, weak driver? They did not see him in the halls of Penske.
"When he introduced himself to the Penske team, he took the opportunity," said Todd Gordon, Logano's team leader. "He came in, and I think Roger [Penske] I believed in him, as I did, and I looked at him and said: "Here is a kid who wins more races in Gibbs Busch cars at the same time. time that Kyle [Busch] done, then he is capable.
"He just needed an opportunity, so he came in and believed in him, and we believed in him, and at that time he was not weak."
Barely five races in his life from Penske, he found himself face to face with this Stewart guy, his arms in motion, after Stewart challenged Logano's aggression in the raises.
"I'm going to smash him," Stewart said after their confrontation.
Logano did not seem so worried and left him behind. He won a race this first year and finished eighth in the standings. He then won 11 races over the next two years, learning to use his bumper when needed to move a person in the hope of not destroying it.
"Honestly, I think I felt like I was back where I was growing up," Logano said. "Growing up, I was an aggressive runner and I was able to win a lot of races."
Of course, he made more mistakes along the way. His lack of contrition for previous incidents probably led at least in part to Matt Kenseth dropped out at Martinsville in 2015, which ultimately eliminated Logano from the playoffs and earned Kenseth a two-week suspension.
In these duels with Kenseth, Logano has somehow changed the rules of the NASCAR playoffs. NASCAR President Brian France, much to the disappointment of many, called Kenseth Logano for a win in Kansas, the "NASCAR par excellence", and everything seemed right now.
In this atmosphere, the intrepid Logano continued to flourish and this intrepid attitude earned him more races and allowed him to completely grab playoffs last year. As the 2018 season progressed from summer to fall and Logano's cars improved, he combined his aggression with an upbeat attitude for which he won the 2018 Cup title.
It seemed appropriate that he win the championship with a solid short race car at the Homestead-Miami Speedway circuit. This rewarded him for taking much more than giving reboots. At the restart with 15 laps to go, Logano was third but was the favorite.
He did not have to worry that Martin Truex Jr. took revenge for the Battle of Martinsville – once Logano overtook Truex, he was too strong for Truex to even stand up. approach to act.
All those years spent being beaten, all those years of struggle, when it appeared that he might not win another Cup race, let alone a championship, have it. accompanied in the last 12 rounds while he was leading to the biggest win – the 21st of his Cutting Career – of his 28 years of life.
"The ability to make mistakes is one of the best things that can happen to you," Logano said. "I have made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes in front of you all, things that I should not say or anything else, but I do not regret anything either. because that makes me the man I am today.
"And without each of these mistakes, I would not be sitting here today … God teaches you many lessons, sometimes the hard way, but I will not repeat them, even if we do not have them. not won today, I would not do it. "
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