BRISTOL, Tenn. – Joey Logano will hit a major milestone in Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
Logano, 32, will make his 500th career NASCAR Cup Series start, 14 years and three days later when he made his first Cup start at New Hampshire Motor Speedway driving the No. 96 Toyota for Hall of Fame Racing in 2008.
“Some days it feels like it’s been a long 500 starts and others it feels like it goes by really quickly and kind of think it’s like probably having kids,” said Logano with a smile. “Sometimes the days are long, but the years are short and it’s probably similar in this sport.
“It goes by in a blink of an eye at times and you kind of go back and it’s easy to kind of reminisce in the past a little bit and think about your first start in Loudon or that first pole here in Bristol and those type things and fast forward 14 years or so and here I am making my 500th start.
“I remember watching (Martin) Truex and (Matt) Kenseth and those guys start their 500th start and thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s a lot of starts. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that far into it.’ Now it feels like it really didn’t take that long.
“It’s a great accomplishment to say that you’ve had that many starts and it’s special, but it’s still always about the wins to me. I want to win a lot, but to be able to accomplish 500 starts at 32 years old is pretty cool.”
A lot has happened for Logano over the span of nearly a decade and a half of racing at the sport’s elite level, but his desire to win hasn’t changed and his highly positive contagious attitude may be enough for the Middletown, Connecticut drive to peak at perhaps 500 more starts before he calls it a career.
“I’m already losing my hair,” joked Logano. “I don’t know if I’ll make it. I don’t have a start goal. I’ve looked into the Iron Man award. It’s definitely possible for me if I can keep consistently making the starts that I’ve been able to do. I’m probably one of the only ones that can really achieve that, so it’s there. I don’t know how much that means to me.
“I know where I am for the foreseeable future right now and I’m happy where I’m at. I just re-signed with Penske and Shell and I’m obviously in a great spot there, but you fast forward a few years down the road and who knows? You can’t call life. You don’t know where you’re gonna be and how competitive you’ll be.”
And while Logano is nowhere near ready to think of retirement, he offered a glimpse on how he’ll know it will be time to turn the steering wheel over to someone else.
You don’t know where you’re gonna be and how competitive you’ll be. I know one thing, if I can’t win and I feel like I am holding back a race team, I probably don’t belong there anymore,” Logano explained. “When I feel like I’m not contributing to performance in our race team, that’s gonna be my cue. But right now, obviously, I still can and I have no thoughts of retirement anytime soon, so we’ll see.
“As we get closer, if I’m a year away maybe I’ll do it, I don’t know. It depends on life – your family and all that too.”
29 wins, 24 poles, 146 top-five, 253 top-10 finishes and the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series championship has seen Logano enjoy his fair amount and NASCAR Hall of Fame worthy of success but for any driver – they never want their last win to be their last and Logano hopes Saturday night’s Round of 16 Playoff cutoff race brings him his third win of 2022 and an automatic berth into the Round of 12.
“You know it’s gonna be a tough, grueling race,” sounded Logano. “You know there’s gonna be strategy that comes into play at some point if cautions kind of stack on top of each other. You know the rubber build up is gonna be different, whether you have 75-lap green flag runs or 30-lap green flag runs and trying to adjust to that or at least knowing where the track is gonna be. I think that stuff will continue to stay the same.”
But when it comes to 2022, Logano doesn’t hide around the fact that the season has been unpredictable and it has carried over from the regular season to the 10-race Playoff format.
“Holy cow,” explained Logano. “What a crazy year, which is what we expected. We expected this year to just be very unpredictable and no one really being able to figure this car out, and it really seems like there are still so many questions and as we come to Bristol for the first time on concrete there is a lot of questions again, so can there be another first-time winner? Absolutely.”
Hunting his first trophy since winning at Gateway in June, Logano has been a part of the Playoffs long enough to know that if your race isn’t going to land you in Victory Lane, make sure you make up for it with the most points possible.
“There are a couple drivers that are expected to win every year that haven’t won yet, so you’ve got to think that they’re probably gonna bust off a win at some point, but you just don’t know,” he explained.
Surprise winner or not Saturday night, Logano reaffirms that points can be your best friend to getting not only through the Playoff rounds but ultimately the end goal of making the Championship 4 round at Phoenix (Ariz.) Raceway in November – and a shot at another Cup Series title.
“I don’t know if it changes the way you go through the playoffs,” he said. “You’re still focused in on just maximizing the day. If that’s a win or if that’s a fifth, you just have to get the most points you can possibly get and I don’t think that changes from year to year.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
