The Surprising Rise Of Joey Logano

In the 2009 Toyota All-Star Showdown Joey Logano, a development driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, took out the leader of the race, and the sheer absurdity of his racing seemed to indicate he was going to be another of those drivers who would go nowhere in his career.

Six years later, the resurgence of Joey Logano has become one of the budding epics of NASCAR.


It certainly didn't start that way.   The Middletown, CT native's family moved to Georgia when he was a youth and he became an ace in Bandolero cars and Legends cars, to where by the age of fifteen he was plugged as "the real deal" by NASCAR star Mark Martin.   He was called "the greatest thing since sliced bread" by Randy LaJoie, the two-time Busch series champ.

When he won at Kentucky at eighteen, it appeared the sliced bread moniker would stick.   He won in ARCA racing in the 2008 Carolina 500 and by the end of that year was driving for JGR in Winston Cup, being groomed as successor to Tony Stewart.   He drove several late-season races for JGR, but it was here that the first hint of struggle showed with dismal efforts, which wound up carrying over into his first full season, 2009.   He finished no better than 30th in his first three races and despite winning the rain-shortened New England 300 and Rookie of the Year, his efforts in a barren rookie field were uninspiring.

The remainder of his career with Joe Gibbs was likewise forgettable, lowlighted by a petulant pit confrontation and generally subpar efforts - he was doing less with more, and though he pulled off a surprisingly strong win at Pocono in 2012, by then it was basically too late.   Gibbs gave up on Logano and signed ex-Roush ace Matt Kenseth for his #20.

Logano was signed by Penske Racing, reportedly at the behest of the team's top driver Brad Keselowski.   Logano's Penske career began with a controversial bang in two ugly set-tos with former JGR teammate Denny Hamlin, one at Bristol and a far more severe confrontation at Fontana where Hamlin got stormed into an inside wall and was seriously injured; it led to a postrace fracas between Logano and Tony Stewart (the result of an earlier on-track showdown that day).

And yet in spite of all that the season turned into the best of his career with a win at the Yankee 400 at Michigan and an 8th in final points.   And the career rebound was just starting,  for in 2014 Logano erupted to five wins, a career-high 993 laps led, and fourth in points.   And along the way he usurped teammate Brad Keselowski, the 2012 series champ, as top dog at Penske Racing.

No one could have seen any of that coming after his pathetic beginning at the Cup level with Gibbs anymore than they could have seen him shooting down the Hendrick juggernaut to win in one of the wildest Daytona 500 finishes ever.   Sliced bread?   Joey Logano is the full loaf of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches right now.

Daytona's 1999 Sideways Throwback 500

This is the year 2015, but the way the Daytona 500 finished you would think it was a sideways version of 1999.   It began with Jeff Gordon on the 500 pole, and the showdown for this 500 was between Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets and Penske Racing Fords.   Despite pre-race hype, the Joe Gibbs Toyotas really didn't offer that big a challenge even with Denny Hamlin's late-race wildcard bid.

1999 was a 500 with little in the way of competition until the final twenty laps - and in 2015 that scenario played out again, but this time there was a big reversal.   In 1999 the Penske Fords led over half the 500 and were unpassable for the longest time until all hell broke loose in the final laps, specifically a three-abreast storm by Jeff Gordon and Mike Skinner that became an unprecedented triple sidedraft epic for the win until it petered out in the final few laps.  

For 2015 this time the Hendrick Chevrolets all but monopolized the 500, looking unpassable until in the final fifteen laps challengers got the run and suddenly the entire field was three abreast thirty cars deep for the win, and the surviving Penske Ford was the one who stormed to the decisive pass.   Denny Hamlin salvaged a miserable day for Joe Gibbs by storming into this fight and finishing fourth, this after starting 42nd and this after the other JGR Toyotas either crashed or were basically useless as far as challenging for the win went.  

For Joey Logano, the 500 win has accelerated a career surge no one could have imagined after his abysmal efforts with Joe Gibbs.   From JGR reject, Logano has become a bona-fide superstar, this even with the continuing abrasiveness in evidence in him.   That teammate Brad Keselowski and the Penske satellite effort fielded by the Wood Brothers all fell out with engine failures was in its own way a display of who is top dog at Penske Racing's stock car unit.

Among the others whose days ranged from respectable to reprehensible -


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* Kevin Harvick has become the lone contender for Tony Stewart's team, finishing second as everyone else in that bunch either crashed (Stewart, this as Danica Patrick actually finished despite having nothing to show for that), got tossed from the tracks (Kurt Busch, who keeps losing appeals), or showed little in the way of fight (Regan Smith).   

* Clint Bowyer is not part of a one-car team, but Michael Waltrip's outfit looks more and more like one as Bowyer contended basically without a teammate all week.  

* Speaking of one-car teams, Martin Truex took a gigantic step forward with his wildcard victory bid, a huge improvement after a dismal 2014.

* Remember Roush-Fenway Racing?  You may not after their Cup program spent the 500 just drafting and amid no sign of real life.  Trevor Bayne was compared to Tim Tebow in 2011 - it's a comparison he better not want, while Ricky Stenhouse's only measuring stick as a racer is how he competes against his girlfriend.

* Richard Petty should not be pleased.   Sam Hornish earned respect with a decent run, while Aric Almirola should count himself lucky he salvaged 15th after being unable to do anything pretty much on the Cup side the whole week, especially on restarts and despite some excellent pit work from Trent Owens' group.   We know Petty's bunch can do a lot better.

* Speaking of doing better, RCR's Chevys showed life after being MIA all week, especially Ty Dillon fighting into the lead group.   Austin Dillon salvaged a decent finish, while Paul Menard was - well, Paul Menard again, and Ryan Newman is officially worthless as far as helping that outfit.

* Casey Mears is what he is - a guy who did less when provided more.   That he unnoticed pulled off a spectacular finish is amazing.  

* While Jamie McMurray looked okay, Kyle Larson looked bad, and the recent history of young drivers in Cup has been discouraging in terms of sustaining early promise.  


It all added up to a memorable yet frustrating start to the 2015 NASCAR season.  

Joey Logano And His Enemies

As NASCAR enters its Easter bye week, the story that isn't going away is Joey Logano and the bad crash involving Denny Hamlin at Fontana. Hamlin's back injury has left him sidelined for perhaps six weeks, and has also touched off criticism (notably from Darrell Waltrip) that there was no SAFER barrier in the area near pit road where he hit. This criticism, though, ignores that Michael Annett at Daytona this year and Eric McClure at Talladega last year were both seriously injured in head-on crashes into SAFER barriers; we really shouldn't assume that having a SAFER barrier where Hamlin hit would have made much difference.

The sport has famously upgraded its safety efforts since 2001 yet it is flirting once again with something worse than what we're presently seeing.


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The issue goes further into the fundamental fitness of Joey Logano to be involved in the sport. The Fontana melee included a brawl Tony Stewart and Logano over the last restart, and the verbiage between the two was unusually vicious between Stewart's rant about Logano's "spoiled" upbringing and Logano lashing at Hamlin for previous incidents - "He shouldn't have done what he did last week (at Bristol) so that's what he gets."

Given the history of Hamlin's career, one actually has to grudgingly agree. ATHLON SPORTS in its 2013 NASCAR preview noted that Hamlin has the most off-turning personality in the garage area, and his past scrapes in the sport further fuel his image as stuck up. Of course Logano's career in effect began with his 2009 Irwindale cheapshot and subsequent disqualification at Irwindale Speedway and it's never gotten better with frequent crashes, poor driving, and periodic fights with other drivers.

What it boils down to with Logano is that he is a combination of Ryan Leaf and Jack Tatum - he's the stuck-up talentless jerk that was Leaf and carries an intimation of malice befitting Tatum.   That he spoke of Hamlin's past scrapes and in effect said Hamlin got what he deserved is one of those radically mixed bags that leaves one uncomfortable - it bespeaks of a bloodthirsty character yet is also an appropriate retort to previous instigation, and given that the law of the jungle applies to sports it's commendable to a point for Logano to say it - the blunt truth is Hamlin did get what he deserved.

Even with that, what amounts to a broken back that could have been worse is scary and leaves one angry with both.   Yet it is typical of this generation of NASCAR racer, where unprofessional behavior on and off the track has long been the norm.   Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards to an even greater severity, and the Busch brothers are the archetypal punk racers of the sport.  For the entirety of their careers they have been reason not to watch.

For now the sport has a bye week, but it gets back to Martinsville and the "rubbing is racing" ethos is likely to see more of the ugliness this 2013 season has already seen.