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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Logano Plays It Perfectly
Joey Logano has finished sixth or better in three of the six Sprint Cup races this season...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 29, 2010   Martinsville, VA
Joey Logano (Left) congratulates Denny Hamlin (Right) after his win in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)
Right place, right time.

Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot else to say about Joey Logano’s second-place finish in Monday’s rain-delayed Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

LINK >UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500 - MARTINSVILLE

By his own admission, the 19-year-old Logano had a car that should have finished in seventh- or eighth-place on Monday. But timing and good driving worked in his favor.

A late-race caution on Lap 500 of the race set up a green-white-checkered finish that began on Lap 207.

When front-runners Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth tangled, and Ryan Newman had a slow restart, that opened the door for the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas of Denny Hamlin and Logano to come flying by. Which is exactly what they did, with Hamlin beating his young teammate to the flag by 0.670 seconds.

The runner-up finish was Logano’s best result since winning at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last summer, as well as his third finish of sixth or better in six races this season. That made for an excellent day.

“It was pretty crazy, Logano said of his afternoon of short-track beating and banging. “I felt like we had a seventh- or eighth-place car all day. I felt like we needed to do good on restarts. I feel like on new tires we were too tight. Never took off. But it paid off at the end of a run and we were able to drive up closer to the front.”

And Logano learned one of the real keys to success at the Sprint Cup level: Pace yourself early, but be there when it counts at the end.

“Hung around there all day, which coming down to the end, we started fifth,” he said of his last restart. “That's where you need to be. The bottom is definitely where you needed to be. It was definitely a big deal. Just seemed like everyone was rooting and gouging, I just kept filling holes.”

For his efforts, Logano moved up to 13th in points, which is actually the best of all three of Gibbs drivers. And Logano said there’s more to come.

“ All of us want it bad,” said Logano. “We felt like a few races ago that Joe Gibbs Racing needs a little bit more to keep up with the Hendricks, RCR, that's doing real good right now. ... We've been having team meetings at the shop going over the last few weeks, ‘What do we need to improve on?’ I think us as a team is doing a better job at that stuff and after the race of having a better thorough meeting and all of us able to bounce ideas off each other. ... it's cool to see all of us improving together.”

LINK >UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500 - MARTINSVILLE

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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