SEASON PREVIEW: Joey Logano seeks to avoid sophomore slump in second Sprint Cup season
Center of attention: Joey Logano fields questions from reporters. // Sam Cranston, NASCAR Illustrated
Joey Logano is banking on his experience – and the progress he made as a rookie – to avoid a sophomore slump in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
Logano can look at the statistics from last year's run in Joe Gibbs Racing's No. 20 Toyota and know he improved over the course of his rookie season. At the 14 tracks where the series competed twice in 2009, Logano bettered his finish at 10 of those tracks when he went there the second time around. He improved by more than 10 positions at five of those tracks.
“I’m twice the driver that I was at the beginning of the season,” Logano said. “I’m excited about that. I feel like me and the team are working better together. I’m also excited about that.
“Between all that, we should be a better race team in general. That gives me confidence going into the season, trying to make our race team better and getting better finishes out there.”
Having finished 20th in the standings last year, Logano said making the 12-driver Chase For The Sprint Cup would be a big accomplishment in 2010.
Veteran crew chief Greg Zipadelli said that Logano’s strength is his ability to run consistently and avoid wrecks. Logano had only three DNFs last year and finished on the lead lap in 22 of 36 races. Not counting his memorable accident at Dover, where he flipped several times 30 laps into the 400-lap race, Logano finished 98.8 percent of the laps during the 2009 season.
“The Daytona 500 [where he finished last] was probably the only race that I could say that he could’ve avoided wrecking the car by not putting himself in that situation,” Zipadelli said. “I think that’s the most impressive part of Joey and what’s going to make him great down the road is he doesn’t make mistakes. He can find that edge that he’s comfortable, he puts it there and he doesn’t go over it.
“Now maybe sometimes he’s not as fast because he doesn’t go over it, but he doesn’t wreck. He brings it home and he can learn from that. I think the way our series is today is that it’s all about consistency, it’s all about finishing, and I think he’s going to do a really good job for us here in the future.”
Logano is still navigating a steep learning curve.
“Every time you go to a race track, there’s a million little things that you find, whether it’s a bump, whether it’s finding a little grip here – [and you think] man, 'I wish I worked on my race car in this area,'” Logano said. “That’s part of being a rookie, trying to figure that stuff out. You talk to a lot of these guys, they’re learning, guys have won championships that you think have got it figured out.”
Logano said the hardest thing to figure out was the Sprint Cup car, which was only in its second year of full-time use in 2009.
“Hopefully, we keep improving,” Logano said. “That’s our No. 1 priority right now. [In the] second half of the season, we really picked it up a lot. We’ve got a lot to go, obviously, but as long as we keep working hard and keep going, I think we’re going to keep getting better.
“I think this year if we can make the Chase, that would be really cool.”
THE LOGANO FILE
• Best career finish: 1st (New Hampshire, 2009)
• Career top-10s: 7
• Career Cup starts: 39
• Laps led: 36
• Best track: Talladega (average finish, 6.0)
• Worst track: Bristol (average finish, 36.0)
• Did You Know: Logano never attended high school. He was home-schooled.
Coming Wednesday: Kevin Harvick
