Joe Gibbs Racing's Joey Logano rolls off 10th on the starting grid for Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
(Photo: LAT Photographic)
Joey Logano gets a certain feeling about midway through every Sprint Cup race.
“Usually a little bit past halfway, I say, ‘Can I press the restart button and just start the whole weekend over now?’ ” Logano says with a laugh. “Apparently you can’t do that. It’s not like a video game.”
It hasn’t been an easy rookie year for the 18-year-old Logano, and he didn’t expect it to be. With just a half-season of experience in the Nationwide Series, and with those cars not resembling Cup cars at all, the Joe Gibbs Racing rookie obviously is still getting adjusted to life as a Cup driver.
Oh, and he hasn’t been able to test at Cup tracks as well.
The result? Logano sits 34th in points with two DNFs. His best finish was 13th at Las Vegas but he has no other finishes in the top 25.
“Yeah, we don’t get to test, but I think by the end of the race, if we improve and have gotten it better, overall it’s [a good day] for our team,” Logano says.
And so far, that has happened in most races with the exception of Bristol, crew chief Greg Zipadelli says.
“It’s huge,” Zipadelli says about Logano’s improvement during races. “Last week [at Martinsville], we had a few things that went against us, but the second half of the race, he ran top-10 basically the rest of the day. … He’s a competitive person. He listens well. He respects the people around him and appreciates the opportunity he has. That goes a long way.”
