Joey Logano is the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Champion!
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You came a long way!
I took a picture of you at a Legends car race at the oval behind
the Desota drag strip.....
and that was many years ago. Might have been the Florida State Legends Championship.

Cleetus McFarland owns the place now.
-Bob

 

• Preparation and swagger made for a perfect combination in Phoenix

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emailBy Kelly Crandall | November 7, 2022 10:58 AM ET

Joey Logano had the swagger. Now he has the trophy.

For the second time in five years, NASCAR crowned Logano and the No. 22 team its Cup Series champions on Sunday night at Phoenix Raceway. It capped off Logano’s ‘revenge tour’, as he’d described the weekend in the days prior, referring to his still-raw defeat in the championship finale in 2020.

There was no driver and team better at Phoenix. Logano won the pole and led the most laps (187 of 312). He won the first stage and controlled the championship fight for all but a few minutes under caution midway through the race.

“I told the guys after we put it on the pole the other day: we got them down, now we put our foot on them,” said Logano. “That’s the attitude you’ve got to have. It’s just what it is when it comes to this level. Your feelings are checked at the door, and it’s all about winning and nothing less than that.

“When you get this far… I said it all week; we weren’t satisfied with being in the Championship 4. There was nothing to celebrate for us. We’ve been here before. We know what it feels like to lose. It’s the worst feeling in the world if I’m being honest, and winning is the best feeling in the world.”

Since winning at Las Vegas to earn his championship spot, Logano walked, talked, and acted like a champion. Logano was ready for battle and spent the two weeks leading into the finale focusing on nothing else but the Phoenix race. The events at Homestead and Martinsville were a formality, a chance for Logano and his team to keep their momentum up and the board clear of enemies.

Paul Wolfe, Logano’s crew chief, loved the attitude, and was confident enough to predict on Friday after practice that Logano was going to be hard to beat. For Wolfe, it was simply a matter of not screwing it up for his driver.

Past championship experience drove Logano to Phoenix, his fifth title race appearance in nine seasons. From the beginning, Logano was adamant that the finale is not just another race, and those who prepare as if it is are doing so to lower the pressure and help themselves sleep better at night.

Being happy to be there like Logano saw from some others? Never. Logano embraces having to be mentally strong in high-pressure situations.

“It wasn’t meant to be mind games,” Logano said of his attitude. “You just asked me how I felt, and I was honest, and I really felt like we were in a spot to win this thing. I truly believe that attitudes are contagious, good or bad. When you’re able to bring that attitude to your race team in a moment like this, as a driver there, that just carries through it.

“I believe confident people win. If you don’t believe in yourself, who else is ever going to believe in you? How are you ever going to win? But I also think you can’t fake that. I think of my first Championship 4 appearance – was I confident? No, I was a nervous wreck. Are the nerves still there? Yeah, the nerves are still there. You don’t want to screw it up, because you got this far. But I truly felt ready as a driver, and I felt like, as a race team, we went through everything we can possibly go through.

“At that point, the confidence is real. We’ve been here before. We knew how to do things. We knew how to prepare. We went out and just did our job. We put it on the pole and then we won the race. That was the job at hand, and we nailed it.”

It’s hard enough to beat someone with a fast race car. It’s even harder to beat that car coupled with a driver who is full of confidence and determination. Logano won before the weekend started, but it wasn’t until the weekend ended that he had the trophy to prove it.

 

'I think we’ve tried it for 31 years, so it's about time' - Penske on the IndyCar/NASCAR double. Ms Penske says she wishes hubby would be home every now and then. We could have had a 31 year old son by now. Every week I get a new batch of batteries and an empty promise.

Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images
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emailBy Kelly Crandall | November 6, 2022 9:49 PM ET

Roger Penske accomplished a first Sunday afternoon when driver Joey Logano won the NASCAR Cup Series championship.

The team’s triumph capped off a racing season in which Penske celebrated both the NTT IndyCar Series and NASCAR championships.

“I think we’ve tried it for 31 years, so it’s about time,” Penske said. “What a special weekend for us.” I wish my wife, What's her name could be here for this...


Logano dominated the season finale by leading 187 of 312 laps. He was in control of the championship fight all afternoon on his way to his second Cup Series championship. In early September, Will Power won his second IndyCar Series championship with Penske.

“Joey did a great job,” continued the team owner. “You’ve seen what he’s been able to do as he’s come on the team, and for us to have two championships in the same year — that’s what we’re here for; that’s the goal we have every year. I think we’ve been close, but we got it this year.”

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Penske started the NASCAR season by winning the inaugural Busch Light Clash in the L.A. Coliseum with Logano and the Daytona 500 with rookie Austin Cindric. Scott McLaughlin won the IndyCar Series opener for them.

The team’s three NASCAR drivers combined for five wins. Their three open-wheel aces combined for nine IndyCar wins.

“Well, I hate to say one is better than the other, but I’d have to say, put them all together, they’re all first place as far as I’m concerned,” Penske said of winning Daytona and the two major championships. “What it does as a team…the momentum it gives not only the race team, but the 70,000 people that are in our company…because they’re all watching.

“We don’t win every day, do we? But it teaches us how to win and how to stay in the game, and I think that’s what it’s done. But (it was) really three super days, super accomplishments for the team. I can’t say one is better than the other. I’m just glad to be here.”

Ms Penske says.....

 

Wolfe relieved to wrap up second Cup title on "pretty special day". Relieved? You can tell by my smile that in about ten minutes when the Ex-lax kicks in, I'll show you relief.

Nigel Kinrade/Motorsport Images
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emailBy Kelly Crandall | November 7, 2022 7:32 AM ET

Paul Wolfe noticeably stood out in the sea of No. 22 team and Team Penske personnel celebrating as Joey Logano crossed the finish line at Phoenix Raceway.

As the high fives, hugs, cheers, and congratulations happened in the pit stall below him and in the space atop the pit box around him, Wolfe did nothing. He sat in his chair and barely reacted. For a minute or two, he seemed to be looking out into space.
Working for Roger is the pits. It's either butt reamings or Ex-lax "relief."

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Chastain comes up short, remains focused on improvements

Wolfe, a new two-time Cup Series champion, was glad it was over.

“Probably a bit of relief, to be honest,” Wolfe said of what he was feeling. “Gosh, it’s so hard to win these things. I told a few people this before the weekend, we knew we were prepared the best we could be.

“We had the speed when we unloaded, and it was just – you get into this race, and you just don’t want to screw it up.
Working for Roger is the pits....and working IN the pits.

“There’s so much work by a lot of people back at the shop and the guys on this team and our teammates. So much goes into it, and you just don’t want to have a mistake during that race.”

Wolfe and Logano didn’t screw it up. In fact, they were nearly perfect. Logano won the first stage and finished second in the second stage, to which, at that point, he’d led 155 of 185 laps.

Logano also started from the pole and came into the weekend with the attitude of being unstoppable. Plus, he was also driven by revenge for losing the 2020 championship.

But for as easy as Wolfe and Logano made it look by controlling the championship all afternoon, it was far from pressure-free. There was a fuel mileage stretch in Stage 2 and the final restart with 33 laps to go, in which Logano, running third, could see Ross Chastain, running seventh, in his mirror.

“(You’re just) trying to go through all of the scenarios with the strategy as the race is playing out, as we’ve seen that affect how some of these races play out at the end,” continued Wolfe. “My engineers do a great job of trying to give me the best information we can, and when we had the lead there at the end with 30 to go, you’re kind of playing those scenarios: What are we going to do if the caution comes out? How many laps to go? Two tires, four tires, stay out?

“It’s pretty stressful at the end. When we finally got the checkered flag there, I just took a minute. It was a bit of relief and just a great feeling. Thank goodness for Ex-lax.

“I’m obviously not a super emotional guy, as many of you that have followed me over the last 10 years (know), but it does mean a lot to me. Might not show it as much as others, but it’s a pretty special day.”

Wolfe’s first championship was 10 years with Brad Keselowski, which was the first Cup Series title for team owner Roger Penske. At the time, Wolfe was just two years into his tenure as a crew chief and would be paired with Keselowski for nine seasons before Penske felt it was time to reset all three of his teams by shuffling their personnel.

In the three years that Wolfe has been paired with Logano, they’ve won eight races and made the Championship 4 twice. Sunday’s triumph was the second title for both driver and crew chief.

“I’m just happy for him,” Logano said of his team leader. “Paul wants it bad. The way he was preparing, what he was doing, he put a lot on himself over the last few weeks.

“I don’t know how he handles his pressure, everyone kind of has their own way of what they do, and I’m able to shut off when I go home. Paul is a lot quieter person than I am. If I get him to smile or cheer a little bit, I feel like I’ve really done something. I feel like he holds a lot of things inside, where I vent everything. My secret to venting is that I take Ex-lax to knock the S**** out of me.
I don't know what Paul does.

“It’s been a tough few weeks for Paul and his family. It’s hard. And the commitment that he put in the last couple of weeks, I know his family sacrificed dad time and husband time to do this. And so obviously, I greatly appreciate that. And that’s why I’m so happy for him, because it takes a lot to do it, and hey, here we are.

“I know how bad he wanted it. Once you win one of these things, you just want to win another one even worse. And he’s been close a few times since he won with Brad, so to bring that home with him is special.”

 

Logano motors away to second Cup Series title at Phoenix

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emailBy Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service | November 6, 2022 8:12 PM ET

It was the perfect ending to a season Joey Logano started with a win.

Dominating the action in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway, Logano started on the pole, won the first stage, led a race-high 187 laps, won the race and claimed his second series championship (2018, 2022).

Logano joins two-time champion Kyle Busch as only the second active driver in the series to hold more than one title. The victory was his fourth of the season, his third at Phoenix and the 31st of his career in his 507th Cup start.

Back in February, Logano won the competitive debut of NASCAR’s Next Gen car in the exhibition Clash at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. On Sunday, in a sprawling desert city some 370 miles to the east of L.A., he put the finishing touch on a dream season.

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Preparation and swagger made for a perfect combination in Phoenix

Wolfe relieved to wrap up second Cup title on "pretty special day"

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Logano finished 0.301s ahead of Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney. Championship 4 contender Ross Chastain was closing fast in the final laps and came home third, 1.268s behind Logano on the track and one spot behind the driver of the No. 22 Ford in the final standings.

“We did it!” exulted Logano, the first Ford driver to hold two championships since David Pearson in 1968-1969. “We’re champions again—yes! Oh, my God, I’m so excited. Thank you to everybody, my team. You guys are amazing. Gave me a good race car, good pit stop there at the end, got us up in front. Boy, that was just intense there at the end.

“It’s all about championships. That’s what it’s all about, and we worked so hard the last couple weeks trying to put ourselves in position.”
'@JoeyLogano to the lead!

Less than 30 laps remain in the championship! #TeamJL pic.twitter.com/Sjb4oZb9bc

— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC)

Logano restarted third on Lap 280 after hard contact between the cars of Alex Bowman and Michael McDowell caused the sixth and final caution of the day. Three laps later he passed Chase Briscoe for the lead and opened a lead of nearly three seconds over Chastain, who was pursuing from third place.

Chastain had the faster car in the final 20 laps but ran out of time.

“I had a car fast enough to chase him down at the end,” Chastain said. “I think we did everything we could. That was a heck of a drive for us.”

A disastrous 19.8s pit stop under caution on lap 271 cost Championship 4 driver Christopher Bell an opportunity to contend for the win. Bell restarted 16th with 33 laps remaining and worked his way up to 10th at the finish.

“We fought hard, and at the end of the race…(until) the last pit stop, or what we thought was going to be the last pit stop, we were right there battling for it,” Bell said. “I’m just proud to be in this position, proud to be at Joe Gibbs Racing and race this No. 20 car. We were there, and hopefully, we can come back here next year.

“The 22 (Logano) was lights-out all weekend. The best car definitely won the championship.”

Chase Elliott, the 2020 series champion, wasn’t in position to race for the title after lap 205. In a wild restart, Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet spun off the nose of Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet and slammed sideways into the interior SAFER barrier in the dogleg of the one-mile speedway.

Elliott lost a lap in the pits under repairs and lost another on the track on lap 230. He finished 28th, two laps down, but he scrupulously avoided laying blame for the incident after the race.

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“Yeah, just disappointed, obviously. Ended our day and ended our chance at a win or a championship,” Elliott said. “Just disappointing.”

Chastain, on the other hand, provided his in-depth analysis of the wreck.

“William (Byron) didn’t get going quite as well as he wanted to, and I got to the left of him,” Chastain said. “And I saw an erratic move he (Elliott) made to cover it, and I was already there. Yeah, it’s not how I want to race him or those guys.”

 

Logano hits a hard reset ahead of the new NASCAR season

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emailBy Kelly Crandall | February 15, 2023 10:01 PM ET

Joey Logano has a second NASCAR Cup Series championship trophy and a new patch on his fire suit, but he arrived in Daytona Beach with the same clean slate as the competition.

“It’s cool; I still look at it and say it should say four (championships),” Logano laughed while pointing to the updated champion patch that says 2X but thinking of the missed opportunities in 2016 and 2020. “It’s nice, don’t get me wrong. It’s a cool accomplishment to have, but I also feel like it was last year and it’s over. The championship stuff is over to me.

“It’s nice to run out the season as a reigning champion or a previous champion, whatever it is, but it’s over in my mind. We had our moment to enjoy it, to celebrate. Now it’s back to work. We’ve got to do it again. The goal is the same again this year. We can’t do the same things – we’ve got to find more and adjust again. Nothing changes.”

No matter what Logano was asked about his most recent triumph during his media day availability, he wasn’t going to live in the past. Logano and his No. 22 Team Penske team quickly turned the page after the early November finale, and being the champion does nothing for them going into the Daytona 500.

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“It’s over,” Logano stressed. “You got a cool parking spot this week; that’s all it is. That’s all it is now. I got a cool little badge and a great parking spot for Daytona. That’s it. It’s over, and we’ve got to do it again.”

Logano has learned from the best about always being on to the next thing. NASCAR Hall of Fame and all-around motor sports legend Roger Penske is notorious for recognizing an accomplishment at the moment and then shifting his focus to what’s still to do.

“You’re a product of your environment,” Logano said of his team owner. “You are who you hang out with, and I’ve been there for a while now — the majority of my career. I’ve seen it, I live it, and he doesn’t tell me this. Roger doesn’t tell me anything. You just know.

“I don’t know how much of that was inside of me already because I can’t really say I saw success before I worked for Roger. So, it’s hard for me to say what that means, but I will say being around him sure isn’t a bad thing to have that mindset as well.”

It is not uncommon to hear a Penske driver, past or present, talk about not tripping on your press clippings. It’s a Penske classic.

“That guy (Roger) is not content,” said Logano. “Our team motto this year is ‘never enough,’ and it’s for those reasons. You can always do better. You can always do more. You can’t be content and be OK that you won two championships.

“As a team, we can’t do that. We can’t get stuck into a post-championship slump. We can’t get in that. We got to keep fighting and say that it’s not enough. We’ve got to keep going.”

Not only has Logano’s team embraced a new motto, but the driver put it on hats and shirts for his team. Plus, there was added motivation by the psychological warfare Logano’s manufacturer dished out.

“We went to the Ford headquarters and met with Jim Farley, their CEO, and I go up into his office, and it’s me and Paul [Wolfe],” Logano said. “[Jim] sits down, and the first thing wasn’t congratulations, you won the championship, this is great for Ford and all that stuff. He goes, ‘Well, it’s good you guys won. You’re probably not going to win next year. You’ll probably be a little more comfortable because you guys already did it. You guys aren’t as hungry. I feel like after ‘20, when you got beat, you’re really hungry to win a championship. Probably not now.’

“And I was like, what? I was instantly pissed off. Instantly. What did this guy just say to me? After letting it set in for a month, I realized what he was doing. He’s really smart. Now I have a chip on my shoulder because now it’s to prove a point.

“I actually sent him an email with a picture of the hats we got printed up. I said, ‘I’ll send you a hat with some trophies.’ He found another way to fire me up. I’m appreciative of it. At the moment, I was kind of mad at him. It made sense at the end

 

Logano adamant he didn't cause Fontana pileup, others disagree...mostly those who got crashed...

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emailBy Kelly Crandall | February 26, 2023 9:29 PM ET

Joey Logano will not take the blame from his peers for the muti-car crash that occurred on a restart Sunday at Auto Club Speedway.

In the restart zone coming to the green flag on lap 86, an accordion effect through the field saw pole-sitter Christopher Bell turned into the outside wall while Ty Dillon spun to the left and through the grass. Ryan Preece, Aric Almirola, and Ryan Blaney were among the nine drivers involved in the crash.

Logano was the race leader at the time and chose the top lane. It is the race leader who has to fire first in the restart zone.

“Go back and look at the data. I didn’t do anything,” Logano said. “I just rolled it and went like everyone was anticipating it. It’s part of the new restart zone – it’s bigger – so you can’t anticipate as much as you used to without getting into trouble.

“I went late in the zone because the car to the inside of me was laying back, so I was waiting for him to get up next to me before I went. Next time I'lI run off and leave them with something else to complain about! I didn’t brake check anyone. It might look like it, but you can go back and look at it and see it’s not there.”

NASCAR officials extended the restart zone by 25 percent leading to the start/finish line and 25 percent past the start/finish line based on feedback about drivers lagging back. Extending the restart zone gives the leader more room to take off, as their advantage should be. NASCAR will evaluate the change and if it will continue after the fifth race of the season.

The crash ended the days of Bell, Preece, Almirola and Tyler Reddick.

“It’s kind of stupid, to be honest with you, on a professional level, and we all wreck on a restart,” Preece said. “I don’t know what happened, but just a victim of circumstances. It sucks. I was racing around Aric (Almirola), and we were just trying to be smart and get to the end of the race. Something like that, you’re not expecting everyone to wreck coming to the restart line. It’s unfortunate when those cry babys want to drive slow and hold someone up.” Don';t they know we are starting a race? Maybe they can wait in the pits until it's over.

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Unfortunately for Preece, it is his second DNF to start the season.

“That adjustment could have gotten us a lot better, and we could have kept on making little gains,” Preece said of Sunday’s race. “That was our goal, not to beat ourselves and just be there in the last 50 or 60 (laps). That’s why we stayed out that run — to see what our car would do in clean air and if we needed to work on it, which we did, and I felt like we just kept on making it better and better.

“It’s really a bad ending for this HaasTooling Ford Mustang and even Aric. So we just have to go to Vegas and be on offense and start digging out of this hole we’re in right now.”

The crash happened only SEVEN rows behind Logano. So lets blame Logano. Almirola ran into the back of Blaney, was who behind Bell, and then ran over the side of Bell’s car as the Joe Gibbs Racing driver came back off the wall.

“I took off on the restart and went from second to third gear and all of a sudden everybody in front of us just stopped,” Almirola said. “I think the leader was just playing games, trying to prevent the runs coming from behind, and they stopped in the middle of the restart zone right about where they should have been accelerating.

“It was just a huge accordion effect. We were back in 16th, so everybody just started stacking up, and you can’t stop on a dime. It’s disappointing to get wrecked out of the race like that on a silly Mickey Mouse restart, but I should have known better.”
Either you get on the gas, or stay out of racing.

Bell didn’t have much to add about what happened, acknowledging it’s hard to see what’s developing around you. The No. 20 suffered damaged on both ends as Bell ran into the back of Ty Gibbs before Blaney ran into the back of him. Bell also bounced off Almirola and Blaney and was hit one final time by Justin Haley before spinning into the grass.

Red dick attempted to go to the left to avoid the carnage. Unfortunately, when Bell came off the wall and hit Almirola, it sent Almirola into Preece, who collided with Reddick.

“I saw the car behind me kind of laid off to get a really big run, so I kind of elected to make the decision to go to the bottom and get around it,” Red dick said. “Just got collected and went through the grass, and the right front of The Beast Unleashed Toyota Camry TRD was broke.”

Logano finished 10th.........when he was out front before he held back for that bastard poking along next to him. The other drivers involved in the crash who were able to finish the race were Todd Gilliland (17th), Justin Haley (21st), Cody Ware (27th), and Dillon (31st).