Joey Logano win at Brickyard would put him in rare air, give Roger Penske missing trophy
INDIANAPOLIS – Reminders are ever-present and motivation immediate when Joey Logano enters Team Penske’s race shop in suburban Charlotte.
Winning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway matters to the denizens of the blended NASCAR and IndyCar shops. And mementos of a Brickyard 400 victory are the missing element from the display of team owner Roger Penske’s weighty accomplishments at the revered old track.
Penske is the most successful owner to compete at IMS, having won the Indianapolis 500 a record 16 times, the latest this May with Juan Pablo Montoya beating teammate Will Power. But his stock car teams are a collective 0-for-40 in NASCAR’s yearly pilgrimage to Indianapolis since 1994. It’s a fact Penske knows well. That it motivates him motivates his employees.
“I don’t think you really need any more incentive besides giving Roger Penske another win at Indy,” Logano said Friday. “You want to add your name to the list of guys that have won here for him. Every time I walk into the shop the first thing you see is all these Indy 500 trophies and the helmets that they wore when they won that race and the picture.”
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Logano’s win in February's Daytona 500 and Montoya’s Indy 500 win in May puts Penske in position for what the driver of the No. 22 Ford undersold as “quite the trifecta.” In 2010, Chip Ganassi became the first owner to capture the Daytona and Indianapolis 500s and the Brickyard 400 in the same season.
Brad Keselowski brought Penske his first Sprint Cup championship in 2012 but has never finished higher than ninth (twice) in five Brickyard 400s. Logano has never better than fifth (last summer) at Indianapolis.
“It it would be really cool to give him his first win in the Sprint Cup Series at this race track,” Logano grinned. “How neat is that? I don’t really need the extra incentive for that.”
Penske told Paste BN Sports last week at New Hampshire Motor Speedway that there was "pressure" on his team to finally produce a Brickyard victory, but was concerned that the aerodynamics package for the event had been altered to a high-drag, high-downforce configuration just weeks before.
“You put the pieces in a bottle and shake them up and see what comes out,” he said.
There’s personal history at stake for Logano on Sunday, also. After winning the Daytona 500 for the first time, he could become just the fourth to claim both NASCAR’s top prize and the Brickyard 400 in the same season, joining Dale Jarrett (1996), Jimmie Johnson (2006) and Jamie McMurray, who used a timely caution to take the lead from teammate Montoya and win in 2010.
“As the race played out, Juan was leading and I was running third or fourth again and I remember thinking on the track, ‘Man what a year Chip is going to have, winning the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400, all in the same year. Just unbelievable’,” McMurray told Paste BN Sports. “Then the caution came out and ended up putting us out front and had a great race with Kevin (Harvick).
“I wish I could have known the results heading in. You’re so worried about trying to win, you don’t think (about) everything that’s going on, like the fact you’ve won both of those big races.”
Logano said that Penske -- who Thursday night was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame for his contributions to the industry -- doesn’t have to remind his teams when the Brickyard begins to loom close on the Sprint Cup schedule. However, “The Captain” is prone to making a few more calls to his drivers than usual as July approaches.
“We feel it without him saying it, believe me, and we talk about it,” said Logano, who will start second. “When this rule package came out he didn’t have to come to us and say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have to develop this thing as quick as we can.’ We were already doing that. We know how important it is to him and how bad he wants to win this thing, so not a surprise to us that he wants to do it and he’s not pressuring us more – he doesn’t really have to – he’s made it known over the last few years how badly he wants to win this race and that hasn’t changed.”
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