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NASCAR

NASCAR rookie Logano will have to learn to handle diisappointments

By SceneDaily.com

Feb 12, 2009

Like most great athletes, Joey Logano hates losing. Hates it. Somewhere on his list of 10 least favorite things – near “poking your eyes out with a tire iron” is losing a stock-car race.

Of course, Logano has lost more races than he’s won in his young career. So it begs the question: How does the 18-year-old phenom handle defeat? Does he punch a wall? Throw a fit? Kick a dog?

“Kick a dog? Geez. Wow,” Logano said incredulously. “Good thing I don’t have a dog, huh?”

Logano was laughing at the thought, perhaps not knowing that kicking a dog was metaphoric, showing just how angry a person could get.

No, Logano doesn’t kick dogs when he loses a race or gets angry. And he doesn’t throw cats either.

No, Logano, the heir to the throne know as the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Sprint Cup car, appears to handle failure with maturity beyond his years.

“I just kind of want to be myself, don’t want to talk about it,” Logano said. “I’ll take a shower at the end of the race and chill out, relax, cool down and then go at it from there.”

His predecessor in JGR’s famous No. 20 entry, Tony Stewart, often didn’t handle failure so well. Stewart was plagued throughout his tenure with JGR with episodes where his temper got the best of him – in public view.

And while Logano perhaps hasn’t gone through such large-scale scrutiny as NASCAR’s top stage, handling failure is often handling failure, no matter what the stage.

“What he does do in the right way and the right time is he’ll sit and tell you what he’s thinking or what he doesn’t like or what didn’t go well,” said Steve deSouza, who runs JGR’s Nationwide Series program, for which Logano drove in 2008.

And that’s in private, deSouza said, not in plain view of television cameras or reporters’ eyes.

“Some of those things, you just can’t teach,” deSouza said. “That’s just his personality.”

That characteristic should serve Logano well in 2009, his first in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, for there will be plenty of times he will face disappointment and struggles.

Logano has been on the fast track to the Cup series ever since Mark Martin sang his praises long before Logano ever earned a driver’s license. Logano won in the Nationwide Series as an 18-year-old last year, bringing more expectations for him.

Now that Logano is here in the Cup series, the expectations need to be tempered, team owner Joe Gibbs said.

“There’s a lot of pressure there, but he seems to handle it well,” Gibbs said. “… We know it’s a big deal, stepping up as a young kid into Cup. It’s a big step. We’re set to go through whatever growing pains and whatever we’ve got to do. We think this is the smartest thing to do for him.”

Throwing a teenager to the wolves that are Sprint Cup drivers might not seem like the smart thing to do, but Gibbs said there were countless discussions with Logano, his family and other JGR officials before deciding to move him up.

“We’re not going to be putting it on him,” Gibbs said. “Sometimes you feel bad for him because other people put it on there, but hopefully we won’t.”

The guy in charge of keeping Logano out of pressure situations appears to be his crew chief, Greg Zipadelli.

For 10 years, Zipadelli knew no one but Stewart as his driver. There were plenty of pains, growing and otherwise, with Stewart, but Zipadelli guided him and the No. 20 team through them all. Stewart became one of the top Cup drivers under Zipadelli, winning two championships.

But after Stewart left to lead the new Stewart-Haas Racing team, Zipadelli has a new pupil.

“We’ve got to understand; we’ve got to have realistic expectations to start the year,” Zipadelli said. “As the year goes, we move them and progress and adjust them accordingly. The biggest thing is if we can steadily increase the way we run against our competition week in and week out.”

Like Logano, Zipadelli won’t burden his young driver with certain expectations. The crew chief enters the year not knowing exactly what to expect but knowing it could be a painful process.

Still, Zipadelli is confident of Logano, saying his maturity belies his years.

“He wants to do this,” Zipadelli said. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t see a lot of the bull. We’re all going to have bad days, but it’s not going to be on a daily basis.

“His biggest struggle is going to be figuring out why he didn’t run good. Was it him? Was it not being able to tell us? Was it me not being able to figure out what he was saying? Did we just do the wrong things?

“That’s where our bad days are going to come from. Part of that is just time. He doesn’t have a lot of time in these cars. We don’t have any time working together.”

That will change, of course, as Logano drives through his rookie season. Can he harness that immense talent? Can he overcome disappointment and see the big picture, one of getting better each week?

Can he satisfy those who have said he was, well, like the sarcastic nickname placed on him by former driver Randy LaJoie, “Sliced Bread.”

“You can’t make everybody happy,” Logano said. “That’s one thing my father has told me throughout the years. I try as much as I can, but the only person you have to please in life is yourself. Does it make you feel better when you please other people? Yes. But at the end of the day, you have to be happy as a person.

“I’m just going to try as hard as I can. That’s why I haven’t set big goals for myself. I want to get out there, see where I’m at and go from there.”