Getty Joey Logano walks out before Daytona 500.
Joey Logano appeared on the February 22 episode of “NASCAR Race Hub” and the Team Penske driver discussed a variety of topics, including his Daytona 500 run, his numerous rivalries throughout his career, and what his plans might be after he steps away from the car. While those remarks were all interesting, his most eye-opening comment came at the end of the show when he shared a story about his first time in a NASCAR Cup Series car.
“I’m 14 years old and I’m possibly going to sign with Roush,” Logano began. “They give me a Cup car to just go play with. And so we’d go to like Concord with it. We’d go to short tracks with it.
“Well, a friend of ours was practicing (at Atlanta) with his Porsche for the Rolex 24, getting ready for it on the road course there. And we were like, ‘Hey, when you’re not doing the road course, can we take our Cup car and make laps?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ We call Ed Clark, who is the president of the track. He says, ‘Yeah, no problem.’
@joeylogano shared a wild story about how he was just 14 years old when he drove his first Cup car 200MPH at Atlanta and got kicked out.
“He thought we were going to bring a legends car. We unloaded a full-on Cup car and they were like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, you can’t do that.’ And we’re like, ‘Oh, come on.’ They eventually say it’s fine, but you got to run this like super slow lap. So I’d run a fast corner and then slow down, a fast corner.
“And it was right before lunch. And my dad’s like, ‘Screw it, Joe. Just go. We’re gonna get thrown out. It’s fine. Just go. They’re gonna black flag you. They’re gonna try to shut you down. You just keep going until you want to come in. So I hammered down and I ran 15, 20 laps. They were pissed. No more practice there. That was the end of that. We loaded it right up into the trailer. Game over. All done.”
“I’m intrigued by something you said, though,” former driver Regan Smith said. “You were 14 years old and that was your first experience in a Cup car. I had never heard that before.”
“Oh, it was bonkers,” Logano acknowledged. “That’s right. And now when I see a 14-year-old kid, I go, ‘Dad, you were stupid.’ Who does that? I mean, you’re 14, you just go, ‘Okay, Dad, yeah, I’ll do it. That sounds fun.’ You think about it, but I was ripping. We were over 200 miles an hour. It was the, you know, the big horsepower cup cars from the day.”
Logano Makes Another Admission While Discussing Rivalry With Kevin Harvick
Joey Logano has had numerous rivalries throughout his career, but one of the first came early on with Kevin Harvick in 2010 when the young driver was not happy with the Richard Childress Racing driver and fired off one of the most memorable quotes in NASCAR history.
“Racing the 29 and he let me go in the middle of the straightaway and decided to dump me in the next turn,” Logano told reporters after Pocono. “I don’t know what his deal is with me. It’s probably not his fault. His wife wears the firesuit in the family and tells him what to do.”
The driver watched the clip aired during “Race Hub” and candidly admitted after it was played that it was a canned response he had planned. He also made another interesting admission a short time later.
“Shouldn’t have said that,” Logano said. “I took that way on the personal side. And even looking back at it, I really deserved to get dumped on the whole thing, too. You learn a lot as you get older.”
Logano Has Unique Goal in Mind
At just 33, Logano has at least another decade behind the wheel. When he does eventually decide to retire, his future might be in the broadcast booth, as he’s proven over the last several years to be a solid analyst working with Fox during multiple Xfinity Series races.
However, before he calls it quits, he revealed on “The Hub” that he has another interesting on-track goal in mind.
“I’m not too far from the Iron Man award that Jeff Gordon has got, like 790-something,” he said. “I’m like 200 starts away. I think I’m the only one that can actually do it and can get there. I don’t know why I want to do that. It pays nothing. But it sounds cool. I don’t know. If you can beat Jeff Gordon in something that would be really neat.”
If Logano does one day reach that milestone mark, it would just be added to his long list of career accomplishments, including being the youngest driver to ever wheel a Cup car at over 200 mph.