CONCORD, N.C. — Joey Logano is set to make his 500th NASCAR Cup Series start with Team Penske this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway while fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series standings.
The three-time Cup Series champion makes the historic start during Team Penske’s 60th anniversary celebration.
“This has been a really special year for myself, but even more so at Team Penske and for Roger Penske. What this company has been able to accomplish for the last 60 years is second to none,” Logano said. “It is truly incredible the motorsports accomplishments that this team has been able to do over different forms of motorsports. Whether it’s sports cars, NASCAR, Indy Car, you name it, Roger has been involved in it.
“It’s special for me to be a small piece of that and when you look at this car, it is really neat. The pictures have gotten smaller since the one you just showed me, which means there are more wins to be talked about, so it’s a little harder to see on this car than it was the 50th car, but it’s really neat to take a second – I’d invite everyone to take a look at it because it is pretty special, just looking at all the pictures on the car of all the special moments. It’s always kind of a pinch yourself moment when you see your car on there too.”
Logano, 36, enters the weekend in fourth place, but only 71 points behind championship leader Kyle Larson.
“I’m good with what we’ve got there, so I look forward to that part. The points, it’s something that we look at a lot,” Logano said. “It’s pretty hard to say exactly what you’re gonna have to do to win this thing. Obviously, you’ve got one car that’s out there by 40 right now and it’s one car and he’s likely to be able to stay running at the pace he’s running. He can do that, but it’s also likely they have some issues.
“At some point, they’re gonna fight through something. It’s really hard to say, so, if he keeps doing what he’s doing, it’s gonna be really hard to catch him,” Logano continued. “He keeps running in the top five and scoring those points, it’s really hard to figure out how to catch that, but one bad race and he’s right back to where we’re in contention again and we can run him back down. Each week gets a little bit harder.
“That 70-point number is pretty far back. It’s something we definitely can do. We’re not talking a log off the fire in any way,” Logano added. “We’re going all-in and I like the position we’re in for the reason of if we are racing for a championship, which we are, there’s not much to lose. We’re on the edge of saying we can do it, so we can race kind of all or nothing in a way to try to still go after this championship. We’re there. We’re in the hunt still, we’re just in the back half of the hunt.”
Rain and cool temperatures are in the forecast for Charlotte this weekend.
“Charlotte has been one of the best mile-and-a-halves we’ve had lately, surprisingly enough because at one point everyone didn’t like it,” Logano said. “Now, it’s a good one again. It is a great race. I think whether it’s hot and slick, which it won’t be, or cooler or at night depending on how the weather looks, it’s gonna probably be pretty dang racy like it has been. It’s a track that is top, bottom, anywhere you want to go.
“There are a lot of options. It’s pretty different though than Vegas and maybe some of the setup stuff translates, but it’s also pretty different, especially because of the texture of the track and the bumps. It’s bouncing around a lot in there. It’s pretty rough, especially three and four, so those parts definitely show up a lot more than the other tracks we’ve been to here recently.”
