Joe Gibbs Racing Young Talent: Joey Logano

When "Coach" Joe Gibbs found out that his cornerstone driver Tony Stewart was leaving his team at the end of the 2008 season, he immediately set out to find new talent.  Rumors flew about who would replace Stewart in the famous #20 Home Depot car, with only a few thinking he would bring up someone that hadn’t even driven a nationwide car.  Enter Joey Logano. 

Joe Gibbs Racing already had two talented "young guns" in Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch.  Kyle was in the middle of having a breakout season and was outperforming almost everyone on the circuit but was still a little rough around the edges.  An older, more experienced driver would help the younger drivers mature on the track but it would be hard to find a talented older driver to replace Stewart when many were already signed to other teams.

With a new idea to find a talented, young driver, the Gibbs team began combing the lower ranks of NASCAR.  Word filtered up to the top executives that there was a kid out there that was barely old enough to drive and to top it off, Mark Martin was high on him, thinking he could be the next big one.  Within months, Logano was signed to the team and found himself sent straight to the top series in motor sports. He drove in three Sprint Cup races during the 2008 season before driving the full schedule in 2009.
 
"Sliced Bread" pulled a light double duty during the 2009 season and was often found in both series’ cars.  He had a rough start to his Sprint career but ended the year pulling off an average finish of  20th (ironically matching his car number) and finished the season 20th in points in the series as well (is anyone else finding this just a tad creepy?) with one win to his credit and Rookie of the Year in the bag. 

He also finished fourteenth in the Nationwide points while running only twenty two of the thirty five races, winning five times and getting sixteen top ten finishes.  Can you imagine what he would have done with a full year in the Nationwide car?

With a solid year of racing under his belt, Logano has entered the 2010 season with a lot of experience, both in racing and dealing with budding rivalries (Kevin Harvick or Greg Biffle anyone?).  We are currently fourteen races into the season with Joey sitting 17th in points, a little over 100 points out of chase contention.  His improvement this season has been outstanding and he is often close to the front during races.

It seemed that JGR knew what they were doing when they took this relatively unknown driver under their wing and decided to make their race team known as the "young guns of NASCAR".  If you don’t know, JGR’s oldest driver is only 29 and has a little less than ten years separating all three drivers.  

If anyone can end Hendrick’s reign as King of the Sprint Cup, it will be "Coach" and J.D. Gibbs with their three young drivers.  And while both Busch and Hamlin are closer to the championship (2nd and 3rd respectively) than Logano, don’t expect the just-turned twenty-year old to spend much more time out of the top twelve.  He currently has five top ten finishes in the Sprint Cup series and seems to be heating up as the drivers hit the middle stretch of the season.

Joey pulled off a history making third consecutive win from the pole at the same track tonight in Kentucky for the Nationwide race, holding off Carl Edwards.  Congratulations Joey.