The Home Depot Team Notes of Interest
· Joey Logano will be making his final NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) start with a yellow rookie stripe on his bumper this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway. It will also be the first time Logano has visited the 1.5-mile track in a Sprint Cup car although he did finish 10th in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race last year. Crew chief Greg Zipadelli and The Home Depot Team have competed in 10 races at the south Florida track in the Cup Series and racked up two wins and five top-10 finishes including a ninth-place run last year.
· Logano has all but wrapped up the 2009 Sprint Cup Series rookie of the year title. He leads Scott Speed by 36 points (238-202) in the standings entering the Homestead 400 this weekend. Logano is poised to become the second Sprint Cup rookie of the year for The Home Depot, Tony Stewart captured the title in 1999 and has since won two championships. This rookie season has been unlike most for the newcomers to the series, while it is the second year of competition for the Car of Today it is the first year of the NASCAR sanctioned testing ban. Even without the ability to test, Logano is sitting ahead in the overall point standings (19th) of three of the last five rookie-of- the-year winners heading into the final race of the season.
· Logano and The Home Depot Team held onto their top-20 position in the Sprint Cup Series standings following a 21st-place finish last weekend in Phoenix. They are sitting 19th heading into the season finale, just 67 points behind Marcos Ambrose in 18th. So far this season, the team has accumulated one win, three top-five, seven top-10 and 19 top-20 finishes.
· The No. 20 Team is taking chassis #262 to the track for the final race of the season. This is a new chassis in The Home Depot Team’s stable.
Logano Quotes on Homestead:
“This will be one of those races, the final one, where I have no real idea what the track feels like in a Cup car. I’ve ran Homestead in a Nationwide car, but never The Home Depot Toyota. So I’ve spent the last few days looking over notes, using the simulator and picking other driver’s brains about the track. From what I’ve seen on the tapes, everyone drives it a little different. It seems like there are a ton of lines and looks really fun actually. Even in what I saw from qualifying, people drove all over the track and up to the wall. I’m looking forward to it; we have one more shot to get a good finish and end the season on a high note.”
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