To say Joey Logano is excited about Kentucky would be an understatement. Logano is undefeated at the 1.5-mile track in Sparta. Three poles and three wins in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series have made him an easy pick to be the favorite for NASCAR’s first-ever Sprint cup Series race, the Quaker State 400, on Saturday.
“I'd say I've got a little bit of an advantage, but I think a lot of it is going to come down to getting your car good,” Logano said on Tuesday’s NASCAR teleconference. “I think my big advantage that I have is I just know what I need to make the car go faster. I know what I need when the race starts and all that. I think that's an advantage that I might have there.”
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| Logano at the tire test on June 1st |
Logano still considers his first win in 2008 as his favorite Kentucky Speedway win.
“It was really, really big,” Logano said. “I felt like that was one of those key moments in my career that was able to get me into my Sprint Cup ride that I have now. You see some guys that are able to win a race pretty quick like that, they get people thinking about you and moving you up pretty quick.”
And Logano mentioned that moving up the track will be a common theme for the Cup guys this weekend.
“I'm real interested in seeing the race, how much higher [the line] goes,” he said. “Every Nationwide race that we've run there has gotten to about the second lane, second and a half lane. I think these Cup cars are going to move up quite a bit further than that once it rubbers up.”
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| Logano at the tire test |
Logano participated in the Goodyear tire test on June 1st at the track, but knows even though he’s got a ton of experience at Kentucky, the guys he races with in the Sprint Cup Series are the best of the best.
“They're going to know what they need and they're going to know how to make speed pretty damn quick out there,” Logano said of his competitors, some of whom have never raced at Kentucky.
When Logano burst onto the Cup scene in 2009, he took over for two-time Cup champ Tony Stewart in the famed No. 20 for Joe Gibbs Racing. Even though Logano was dubbed “Sliced Bread” by some (as in, the best thing since) he had some growing pains as a rookie at NASCAR’s highest level.
“I always say all 43 drivers in the Sprint Cup Series were really, really good in whatever they did growing up,” the 21-year-old Middletwon, Conn., native said. “They were the best of the best in whatever series they were in. Now we're all racing against each other, you know, so it doesn't get any better than that. So it's the best race car drivers in the United States for sure that are all running against each other, and it's tough for sure.
“But when you win against these guys, it means that much more.”
And Logano wants nothing more than to win twice this weekend in Kentucky.
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Race prep has begun in Kentucky and I’ll have more tomorrow from the Speedway. Check out the special section on FOX19.com where I’ll be contributing videos and photographs all week long: http://www.fox19.com/category/215363/nascar-sprint-cup-quaker-state-400-at-kentucky-speedway
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