For a struggling young driver, there is nothing quite like beating one of the best to boost your sagging confidence.
That’s what Joey Logano is counting on after holding off Kyle Busch, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, to win last Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Nashville Superspeedway.
His best Cup finish of the season was 13th in the Shelby 427 at Las Vegas. But he has finished 26th or worse in every other race, including 30th or worse in five of those.
No one expected those kinds of early results, especially Logano. Despite being only 19, this is a kid who has always excelled in whatever machine he’s been asked to jump in.
Well, you know what? Many of us were wrong. He is human, and it will take some time. No one, including Logano, can jump right into one of NASCAR’s new cars and go to tracks where he’s never raced and expect to run up front right away with the likes of Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and, well, Kyle Busch.
The real problem for Logano was that he apparently had read all of his own press clippings a little more closely than even he was aware. He appeared stunned by his lack of immediate success at the Cup level, and almost instantly seemed to develop a lack of confidence in his considerable abilities in that arena.
That’s what made Saturday’s Nationwide victory so important for him. It wasn’t in the same car he drives in Cup, nor on a track where he will compete in NASCAR’s top series. And while many of the best drivers in the business were not competing, several of them were—including Busch.
And Logano beat them all, taking the lead from Busch with nine laps to go and holding him off for his second career win in only 24 Nationwide starts. His first came at Kentucky Speedway in his very first Nationwide event last year.
“It’s big for me, an awesome confidence booster for sure. I’m looking at it and saying, ‘Hey, I can do this; I am here for a reason; I can win races.’ That’s big, just to reassure yourself of that. I’m sure this is just going to keep carrying on and now we just have to build on this momentum and keep going.”
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