What was a dream to Joey Logano became an ambition, and on Nov. 18 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, ambition became reality.
The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford won the season finale at the South Florida track to claim his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship, and the reality of that first title sank in as soon as Logano crossed the finish line.
“This is what we’ve worked for our whole life,” Logano said on Wednesday at the Wynn Las Vegas after the NMPA Myers Brothers Awards. “Not 10 years that we’ve been trying at the Cup level, but it started in ’95 when I first got behind the wheel of a go-kart. That’s when this goal started.
“There was never a second thing that I was going to try to do. This was it—NASCAR champion.”
Not that Logano considered a Cup championship a possibility when he was five years old—but he could dream.
“You’re a kid, and it’s a dream,” Logano said. “Maybe a goal is a little different. It’s a dream at that point. A lot of kids want to be NASCAR champion, and I’m here to say it can happen, as long as you keep working hard and taking advantage of the opportunities in front of you.
“When I went to elementary school, and they said, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’, it was always race car driver.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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