No. 20 Home Depot Toyota News & Notes:
- TIME TO TURN IT AROUND: The No. 20 Home Depot team is looking for a turn around this weekend at Kansas Speedway after a couple of difficult past few weeks in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. After starting out the season strong, Logano has struggled with the handling of his No. 20 Toyota the last couple of races. The team, along with Logano, has been spending a lot of time in the shop working on the cars and going over notes of previous races and events from last year. The team also spent some time testing at Nashville Superspeedway a couple of weeks ago and will be taking part in the Goodyear tire test at Pocono next week. All of these things, along with a developing relationship between Logano and new crew chief Jason Ratcliff, have the team looking for a big turnaround starting in Kansas.
- CHUG FOR THE USA HOCKEY FOUNDATION: As many people see each weekend, Joey Logano is one of the Coca-Cola Racing family of drivers. As part of being with Coca-Cola, Logano takes part in the annual “Chug for Charity” contest, where all of the Coca-Cola drives earn points for utilizing Coke products on-camera. At the end of the year, the points are tallied up and the drivers are awarded money to donate to their favorite charity based on how many “chug points” they’ve earned. On Wednesday night, Logano will present a check to the USA Hockey Foundation, one of his favorite charities, for $10,000 he earned through the “Chug for Charity” program. Logano will present the check to the USA Hockey National Development Sled Hockey team at the Extreme Ice Center in Indian Trail, NC. The USA Hockey team will face Team Canada as a part of the team’s training and preparation for the 2014 US Paralympic games in Sochi, Russia. This team trains bi-monthly at the Extreme Ice Center along with the USA Hockey National Paralympic program.
- ISLA THE BULLDOG IS ISLA THE STAR: Before the start of the season, Logano added a new member to his family, his new English Bulldog named Isla. Since then, Isla has become somewhat of a NASCAR pet star. She made her TV debut during the long rain-delay in Daytona on FOX Sports and started her own Twitter account (@IslaTheBulldog) which grew to over 2,500 followers in its first week. Now, Logano and Isla will be a part of the next version of the Greg Biffle Foundation’s NASCAR Pets Calendar. Logano and Isla took part in a photoshoot this past week at his shop for the upcoming calendar.
- QUALIFYING SOLID FOR LOGANO IN KANSAS PLAINS: Logano has competed in five events at Kansas Speedway over the years and has a best finish of 17th, which came in the fall of 2010. Logano’s other finishes have been struggles, however, his qualifying at Kansas has been decent. In 2010, Logano qualified fourth and followed that up with a fifth-place qualifying effort in the spring race at the track in 2011.
- STILL IN THE CHASE HUNT: Despite struggling on the track the last couple of races, Logano still finds himself 13th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings. Logano is just 81 points out of the top spot in the standings and just 27 points out of the elusive top-10, which qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup at the end of the season.
- SOCIAL MEDIA UPDATE: Logano recently got a new Twitter handle. Joey can now be found on Twitter at @joeylogano rather than his old handle of @jlogano. The switch was in an effort to build a better brand identity for Logano on Twitter, as well as use his name and racecar as a way to help direct people to his official Twitter account. And yes, Logano does all of his own Twitter postings, unless followed by the hashtag “#teamJL.” You can find Joey on Twitter @joeylogano, on Facebook at facebook.com/joeylogano20 and on YouTube at youtube.com/joeyloganoracing. Home Depot Racing can be found on Twitter @HomeDepotRacing
- RACE INFO: The STP 400 at Kansas Speedway (Kansas City, KS; 1.5-mile oval) is set for Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 12:30 pm ET. That race will be broadcast on FOX (TV) and MRN (radio).
Logano’s 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Season Stats:
Starts |
Wins |
Top 5 |
Top 10 |
Poles |
Laps Led |
Earnings |
Avg. Start |
Avg. Finish |
7 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
2 |
$950,548 |
10.0 |
16.7 |
Logano’s Career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Stats:
Starts |
Wins |
Top 5 |
Top 10 |
Poles |
Laps Led |
Earnings |
Avg. Start |
Avg. Finish |
118 |
1 |
14 |
31 |
3 |
149 |
$15,211,418 |
18.2 |
19.0 |
Logano’s Career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Stats at Kansas Speedway:
Starts |
Wins |
Top 5 |
Top 10 |
Poles |
Laps Led |
Earnings |
Avg. Start |
Avg. Finish |
5 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
$527,166 |
15.0 |
27.2 |
From the Cockpit:
Joey Logano Quotes: “Kansas Speedway has always been a pretty good track for me in the Nationwide Series but we’ve had our share of struggles there in the Cup Series. It’s a wide, fast track that really puts a lot of emphasis on aerodynamics and speed. Like a lot of the 1.5-mile tracks, you have to be good and have a car that can turn, even when you are behind other cars. You don’t want to lose the nose when you are behind someone. So handling is key to these places. If you have a car that is handling, you will have the speed.
“We have spent a lot of time the last couple weeks working on our program. We have a lot of areas we are better at than we were last year, but a lot of things we are still trying to improve at. We might not have had the finish in Texas that we wanted, but we learned a lot of stuff. People also forget that Jason and I are still just a handful of races into our relationship as driver and crew chief. So we are still growing. Things will keep getting better and I think we will get this Home Depot Toyota in Victory Lane soon.”
No. 20 Home Depot Toyota / Joe Gibbs Racing Team:
Driver – Joey Logano
Crew Chief – Jason Ratcliff
Car Chief – Jason Shapiro
Race Engineer – Jacob Canter
Engineer – Mike Lorusso
Spotter – Rocky Ryan
Shock Specialist – Dusty Boyd
Mechanic – Scott Geerts
Mechanic – Todd Foster
Mechanic – Leo Thorsen
Tire Specialist – Jerold Shires
Engine Tuner – Mike Johnson
Tires – Bill Byrne
Truck Driver – Thomas “Thumper” McCrimmon
Truck Driver – Scott “Scooter” Crowell
Jackman – Jason Tate
Gasman – John Eicher
Front Tire Changer – John Royer
Front Tire Carrier – Chris Taylor
Rear Tire Changer – Joe Crossen
Rear Tire Carrier – Eric Groen