CupScene.com

(By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service)

Posted: Wednesday,January 25th, 2012

CONCORD, N.C.– Joey Logano needed a change.

He knew it. Crew chief Greg Zipadelli knew it. Team owner Joe Gibbs knew it — and so did teammate Kyle Busch.

Logano’s third full season in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series was his worst so far, and that’s not what was supposed to happen to the racing prodigy who arrived at NASCAR’s highest level on a wave of unmitigated marketing hype.

“Sliced Bread” was Logano’s nickname, as in “the best thing since.” But there wasn’t much to promote in 2011 as his performance and his relationship with Zipadelli deteriorated. Busch saw some things he didn’t like about dynamics of the No. 20 team and raised the issue with Gibbs and team president J.D. Gibbs.

At the end of the season, in a move that seemed inevitable, Zipadelli obtained a release from his contract with JGR and moved to Stewart-Haas Racing and a reunion with Tony Stewart, who he had led to NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championships in 2002 and 2005. Zipadelli will serve as competition director for the Stewart-Haas organization and will be on the pit box for Danica Patrick’s 10 Cup races this year.

Jason Ratcliff, the abundantly successful crew chief on JGR’s No. 18 Nationwide Series car, earned a promotion to Logano’s No. 20 car in the Cup series.

Joey Logano during the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Media tour (Photo: Greg Engle)

“I saw some stuff that I really didn’t believe in and expressed those opinions to Joe and J.D., and maybe that’s why we’re here today,” Busch said Monday at the JGR stop on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway. “You hate to see people lose their job, but if they’ve got better opportunities with someone else, you’re not going to sit there and hold them back.

“Zippy is an amazing crew chief, and he was an amazing leader with Tony Stewart. Now he’s got another opportunity with Tony Stewart. I think that’s a good deal for him. I think that’s a better deal for Jason Ratcliff. I think that’s a better deal for Joey Logano. So all around, everybody wins.”

Logano agreed.

“I think that both of us needed a change — me and Zip. He needed to do something different. I needed to do something different. He made a good move. He wants to be at home more, be with his kids more.

“I can understand his point of it, and I think he can understand my point of it. It’s like, ‘Hey, this is going to give me a fresh start with a new crew chief and kind of make it more my team.’ That’s a big deal.”

That’s a recurring theme at Gibbs this year, building the team more to Logano’s liking. Zipadelli was a champion crew chief who called the shots. Ratcliff is more attuned to Logano’s input.

“Hopefully, I can just paint the picture a little different, give him a little bit different way of looking at things and really focus on building a race team around Joey,” Ratcliff said. “Not that it wasn’t before, but really coming in with that as one of our main focuses: Let’s build this race team around Joey the way he likes things.

“We’re going to build our cars and put the details in that Joey Logano likes, not necessarily force him to do things just because somebody else does them. I think that builds confidence for him, knowing that his group and his crew chief are there for him 100 percent.”

Logano ended the 2010 season with three top-fives in the last four races. He entered 2011 with abundant optimism. But a construction change to Goodyear’s tires last year seemed to baffle him. Logano lost the feel of his car, especially on intermediate speedways.

Ratcliff said the entire organization struggled with the changes Goodyear made.

“There were a lot of things that were different,” Ratcliff said. “Zippy and his guys put a great year together at the end of 2010, and when you build that kind of momentum, and you think you have a direction with your race cars and your race team, and you go into 2011 with those same expectations, and Goodyear can make a little twist, a little change, and, whoo, man, it can throw you for a loop.

“You’re always chasing where the rubber meets the road.”

Logano agreed that the tire was an issue, but it doesn’t explain the falloff in performance from the beginning of the season to the end. Having finished 16th in the standings in 2010, Logano fell to 24th last year.

“To me, I don’t think it was all the tire,” he said. “I think some of it was the tire. But you can look at the results from the beginning of the season to the end of the season—qualifying results, how different they were.

“Kansas comes to mind. I think I qualified third or fourth (actually fifth) at the beginning of the season. I qualified (20th) when we came there the second time. Same tire — what’s going on here?”

The history of stock car racing is littered with young drivers who advanced too far too fast, but Logano is reconciled to the pressure that came with his early baptism by fire. Logano’s contract with JGR is up at the end of the season, but to the 21-year-old driver, that’s almost irrelevant.

“There might be more pressure, but I think I can do it, more than I could last year even,” Logano said. “I think you should treat every season like it’s a contract year anyway. You should want to win the race, no matter if you have a job next year or not. For me, it doesn’t make a difference. I’m out there trying to win every race.

“When you win a race, and everything’s good, that’s what makes it worth it. That’s what makes it worth all that pressure and not being able to sleep. Winning those races and pulling that thing into victory lane — there’s not any better feeling in the whole world, I promise you.

“That’s what I strive for every day I wake up and crawl out of bed.”

Though Logano hasn’t won a race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series since his lone victory at New Hampshire as a rookie in 2009, he believes he can find that feeling again this year.

“I feel more confident in myself and my race team, knowing what I know now, going through the stuff that I went through last year,” he said.

And as for the too-much-too-soon aspect of his rapid advancement to Sprint Cup, Logano is philosophical.

“I think it added pressure, but I think it was one of the biggest blessings of my life, too,” Logano said. “I wouldn’t have these people behind me. That was a big deal.

“Did it bring pressure? Yeah. But I probably never would have had the opportunity if I didn’t (make the move). You tell me what’s better. I’ll take the pressure all day.”