Friday, May 30, 2008
Joe Gibbs Racing couldn’t wait until its longtime developmental driver turned 18.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Joey Logano better be good. Very good.
Scratch that. He better be great.
A longtime developmental driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, the team had been counting down the days until Logano turned 18 last week. That made the phenom eligible to compete at NASCAR’s national level and JGR wasted no time putting their prized prospect in a car.
Logano makes his debut Saturday in the Nationwide Series race at Dover International Speedway, and his boss clearly expects big things — now.
“The last time I called him ... I said, ‘Hey, no pressure — we’ll take a first or second every time,’ ” Joe Gibbs quipped.
He was only partly joking.
Gibbs has likely invested several million dollars in Logano in the three years he’s been in JGR’s developmental system. The team won the race to sign him after veteran Mark Martin raved about the then 15-year-old “real deal” who was cleaning up in everything from legends to late models.
“I am high on Joey Logano because I am absolutely, 100 percent positive, without a doubt that he can be one of the greatest that ever raced in NASCAR,” Martin said in 2005. “I’m positive. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
Since that ringing endorsement, Logano has won races at every level.
He won the 2007 Grand National title with five wins in 13 starts and won in his only NASCAR West Series start. Last October, Logano led 87 laps at Irwindale Speedway to beat many of NASCAR’s top developmental drivers in the Toyota All-Star Showdown.
Then 20 days before his birthday, Logano entered his first ARCA event, winning at North Carolina Speedway and cementing Martin’s assessment of him.
“Joey is magic, take my word for it,” Martin said last week. “You will see soon.”
So it was no surprise to see the Gibbs organization celebrate his birthday Saturday by rolling out a massive 150-pound cake modeled on the car Logano will drive this weekend at Dover. Team officials have shown unbridled enthusiasm about Logano, leading many in the industry to jokingly refer to the kid as “Sliced Bread.”
“It was special for us to take Joey out there and kind of work with our East-West guys for a while, do some Pro Cup racing and then when our Cup guys really had some time with him, they were bragging on him and said he was ready now — and that was last year,” team president J.D. Gibbs said.
“That kind of goes back to what Mark Martin told me several years ago when he was still 15, that he could go out there right now and drive these cars. I thought he was crazy at the time, but Mark has good wisdom because he really wasn’t that far off.”
So exactly how did a kid from Middletown, Conn., become the next big thing?
Truth be told, it wasn’t via a conventional path. His father, Tom, owned a garbage business in Connecticut and when Joey turned 4, he bought him a go-kart that his son drove day and night as he shunned the traditional stick-and-ball sports.
A mechanic at Tom Logano’s company had a son racing quarter-midgets, creating the idea that Joey should try it. But his racing career didn’t take off until the family relocated to Georgia — not for Joey’s racing, but so their daughter, Danielle, could further her figure skating career.
Once in the South, Joey was free from Connecticut’s age restrictions and was soon competing in Bandaleros and Legends cars. Three years later, at the age of 12, Joey won the Southeast-based Pro Legends national championship.
His parents knew then they had something special, and nurturing Joey’s career became the most important thing. He’s sacrificed a ton of his childhood to get to this point, but Logano wouldn’t change a thing.
“What would you rather do, go to college or drive race cars? For me, I’d rather drive race cars,” he said. “Sometimes you gotta give up something to gain something, and right now this is what I’d love to do the rest of my life.”