Hallman: Bread winner? Logano seeking return to form at RR

NASCAR is spending Easter weekend at the ¾-mile Richmond Raceway, culminating in Sunday evening’s 400-lap Cup event. Logano, who turns 34 in May, was the series champion in 2018 and 2022, but the first six events of 2024 have not underscored his former-champ credentials.

So far this year, he has managed one top-10 finish – a ninth on the 1.5-mile Las Vegas track, where he led just two laps despite starting on the pole in his Team Penske Ford.

Can Richmond offer a remedy to Logano’s doldrums?

“I love the track,” Logano said last week in a telephone interview. “It’s one of my favorites and one of our best.”

Indeed, he has won twice at Richmond.

2014: in one of the track’s great finishes, Logano dove to the inside and shot by three leaders with three laps to go. He finished a second ahead of Jeff Gordon.

2017: Logano took the lead late and held off hard-charging Penske teammate Brad Keselowski, who had dominated the race.

Even when he doesn’t win, he runs well on Richmond’s D-shaped track. Since that 2017 victory, Logano has recorded seven top-five finishes in 12 starts, including a couple of breathless second-place losses – to Kyle Larson in the track’s second 2017 event and to Martin Truex Jr. in 2019.

This week, NASCAR brings to Richmond its amended short-track handling package, something Logano said may work well at the track.

“It makes the car freer on the corner,” he said, “which I think will widen out the racetrack.”

Logano said the track’s surface can be tough on NASCAR’s Goodyear racing slicks, too, making it harder to post good lap times. He likes that, he said, because it puts the advantage in the hands of veteran drivers. “It means you have to concentrate on how hard you push the car.”

Logano knows something about the advantages that come with experience – and about the outlandish expectations sometimes heaped on younger stars.

He was once the teen sensation of all of stock car racing, a kid from Connecticut heralded as a sure-fire superstar-to-be. Former Cup driver Randy LaJoie (father of current driver Corey LaJoie) nicknamed Logano “Sliced Bread,” as in the best-thing-since. The name stuck.

As well it should – Logano won races in all sorts of cars in lower-level series. He earned a ride with the vaunted Joe Gibbs Racing organization. In 2009, he became the Cup Series’ youngest-ever winner (19 years, 35 days) when his team’s save-fuel-and-don’t-pit strategy paid off in a rain-shortened race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

But the Gibbs ride came with high expectations. It took 105 races for Logano to notch his second and last win with the team. in 2013 Gibbs replaced Logano with Matt Kenseth, who won seven races in his first Gibbs season.

Logano, who hadn’t lost all his luster, landed his ride with Team Penske, where he would rebuild his reputation. He won once in 2013, then really hit his stride with five wins in 2014, six in 2015. In all, he’s won 30 times since joining Penske.

The 2024 season hasn’t been much for Logano so far. He has qualified on the pole twice, but thanks to a mixture of bad luck and a less-than-stellar car he has struggled to stay up front. He arrives in Richmond in an uncharacteristic spot in the series point standings – 22nd.

If anybody can deal with a disappointing stretch in racing, it’s Logano. Asked for maybe the 1,000th time about his early-career struggles, he answered with grace.

“I think any time as a human, you go through any kind of challenges of life, that’s when you grow the most,” Logano said. “They’re not the most fun times, but you get a few hard things in life, and you grow and become stronger and be a better person.

“Any time you go into professional sports and you try to compete at the highest level, you’re taking a challenge. For that reason, I think a lot of times when athletes retire they end up being some of the mentally toughest, most well-rounded people that you’ll ever meet.

“They’ve been in some very interesting scenarios and high-pressure situations,” Logano said. “Even if they’re not well educated and are in a completely different industry, they have the tools and the skill set of knowing how to learn quickly and knowing how to handle pressure – and also people in a team environment – really, really well.”

Having waxed philosophical for a few minutes, Logano steered to the temporal, giving Richmond high marks for dining and entertainment.

“We enjoy going up there,” he said. “Obviously with our family (wife Brittany and their three young children) and all on Easter weekend to enjoy together.

“The city itself is really cool. I’ve been in some really cool restaurants in cool areas of the city. I stay at the racetrack most of the time. Only so many times I have the time to go explore out there, but we do enjoy that area.”

Maybe Logano was just slathering it on to win the favor of Richmonders, but he did it in a winning way – his off-track demeanor matching his on-track style.

As papa LaJoie once said, “Sliced.”