Joey Logano, Now A Two-Time Nascar Champion, Says Continuity Is Key To Penske’s Success

Joey Logano couldn’t have predicted it better. He nailed it on the head when — just a week ago — the Team Penske driver said he was the most prepared of Nascar’s Championship 4.

Logano entered Championship Weekend at Phoenix Raceway with a chip on his shoulder, boasting a level of confidence unlike anyone else in the title battle. When the checkered flag flew after 312 laps, Logano was crowned the Nascar Cup Series champion, becoming the 17th driver to win multiple Cup Series titles.

“You better have that attitude,” Logano said two days after being crowned as the 2022 champion. “You want to have that real sense of confidence. The only way you have that is by putting the prep work in. You can’t really say that stuff and not be ready. I felt like, as a team, we were in a great spot. It showed on Sunday.”

This championship is much different for Logano, 32, compared to his 2018 title. This time around, his son Hudson was there to celebrate with him on the frontstretch, a moment the father-son duo will never forget.

“Being there and watching him run around and grab the flag, that was one of the moments I’ll always cherish and remember,” he said. “I always wanted to do that with my son, and to do that with the championship flag is pretty special.”

Logano points to the team’s continuity as the season for his success in Nascar’s premier division. Since joining Roger Penske’s organization nearly a decade ago, he’s become a force to be reckoned with, earning 29 wins in 10 seasons together.

It’s not just the relationship between Logano and Penske, though. It’s much more. Shell-Pennzoil has been riding along with Logano since he joined Penske, currently serving as one of the longest running driver-partner duos in Nascar.

Logano explained, “When you see in business a relationship lasting over 10 years, it says that it’s working, people are doing it in the correct way and you’re conducting business in a professional way. And that doesn’t happen in business without doing it that way.

“When you think of the partnership that Penske has with Shell and myself over the years and the relationship that comes with that, you’re truly winning together. The relationship is so much deeper and it means more when you win like this.”

Penske, who’s now won 43 championships in different forms of motor sports, is a mentor to Logano. He’s the person who believed in a young Logano a decade ago, and the person who’s supported him ever since.

“It’s hard to fly like an eagle when you’re working with a bunch of turkeys,” Logano said. “When you think of what Team Penske is and you think of Roger — Roger is one of the biggest eagles you can find because he wins.”

Could Logano catch Jimmie Johnson’s 83 wins and seven titles?

At age 32, Johnson had 40 wins and three titles. He was in the midst of his record breaking five straight championships from 2006-10. Logano has two championships and 31 trophies. Both became Daytona 500 champions at a young age — Johnson at 30 and Logano at 25 — while Logano’s first Cup title came at 28 while Johnson was at 30.

“I don’t know if I can compare to Jimmie Johnson,” Logano said. “I appreciate it, but I don’t know. I feel OK about my career so far. I look at it and say we should have four championships instead of two.

“Every one of those losses came with real key learning. You wouldn’t trade those losses for anything because it forms you into the person you are. A lot of times you need those moments. It doesn’t mean you have to like it, but it’s part of life.”

And the craziest part of this journey is that so many pieces in the Nascar puzzle needed to be put into place to make this happen.

Logano announced he was leaving Joe Gibbs Racing for Penske in September of 2012, the same time that Matt Kenseth was named as his replacement in the No. 20 car.

He took over the No. 22 car in unique circumstances in 2013.

“We almost got a deal done the year before that, but the timing wasn’t right with a lot of the contract stuff,” Logano said. “It all just worked out. It didn’t look like it would work out the year before that. Then, the opportunity represented itself.”

AJ Allmendinger was suspended by Nascar for a failed drug test and was released by Team Penske on Aug. 1, 2012. Sam Hornish Jr., who took over the car in July, would return to the Xfinity Series in 2013, leaving room for a new driver to enter Penske’s Cup Series team.

“It’s crazy to think it wasn’t even a decision that I had to make,”Logano said about signing with Penske. “It was the only choice. There was no thought that went into it. It was all I had. It was an amazing opportunity when you think about it; being able to partner with a company like Shell and with Roger Penske. I was 23 years old. I didn’t really know what the next steps were in my life a couple of weeks before that.

“Things work out in a certain way for a reason. That’s why you have to keep your faith. You have to understand that things happen for a certain reason and it’s hard to see that in the moment. But when you fast forward 10 years from then and you look at what we’ve accomplished as a team, it’s nuts to even think about it.”

As Logano moves forward, he doesn’t have any bucket list items he wants to check off. There are no races outside of Nascar that he’s circling on the calendar, for now.

The priority for this 32-year-old husband and father of three is to be there for his family.

Of course, there are goals for Logano and the No. 22 team. That starts with winning championship No. 3 in 2023. He already has a slogan for it, too.

“Win three in ‘23.”

His slogan for the 2022 campaign was #The22in2022. It paid off.