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.”
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