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LOGANO AND SPEED READY TO MOVE UP A GEAR IN SOPHOMORE SEASON

For reigning Raybestos Rookie of the Year Joey Logano and last year’s challenger Scott Speed, the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season was a whirlwind. New tracks, new cars, new teams and high expectations were the order of the day for both drivers.

The 2010 Sprint Cup represents a different challenge: improving on their first seasons and making the next step up the ladder to Chase contenders.

For Speed, it’s a matter of confidence and of taking the success he had in qualifying in his No. 82 Red Bull Racing Team Toyota Camry and making it translate to the races.

“I would say that my confidence level is the same as it has always been,” he says. “Last year was a challenge for me and I like challenges, so it just makes me work harder, but never can a driver lose confidence in himself. The No. 82 team has studied a lot with our car, as well as the No. 83 (Brian Vickers), over the winter and we’re very prepared for 2010.”

The first piece of proof came with last Saturday’s Daytona 500 Pole Day qualifying runs, when Speed clocked the second quickest time of the “go or go home” guys – teams that hadn’t finished in the top 35 in 2009 owner points.

Speed was a tantalizingly close 36th in owner points in 2009 and must qualify on speed for the first five races of the season. The first of those, the Daytona 500, is already locked in after his Pole Day pace (Thursday’s Gatorade Duel races will only determine his actual starting spot). But he has to repeat the feat at the next four races – California through Bristol – to be able to earn enough points to get in the top 35 and earn a guaranteed starting spot beginning at race six, Martinsville in late March.

Not that it bothers him at all.

“The most important thing I learned was patience,” says the 27-year-old Californian. “The season is long and there are a lot of ups and downs. My outlook for 2010 is quite positive. We improved a lot during the last half of last season, so we expect to be running strong each weekend.” Speed says the biggest factor in his season will be his team’s never-say-die attitude.

“The key to success this year for our team is to never give up,” he says. “We have a great group of people and we work hard and have fun, which is the main key to success.

“On the practical side, we also have a few more engineers traveling with us, so that can never hurt. It all adds up to us making some big steps, I think.”

Logano doesn’t have to worry about getting in races on his qualifying speed, having finished 20th in the 2009 driver and owner points. His debut season also brought him a first Sprint Cup race win – at his home track in New Hampshire, no less – and now it’s a matter of building on the momentum he had in the closing weeks of the season and continuing to grow as the driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Home Depot Toyota Camry.

“We have to keep improving from where we were at the end of the season,” Logano says. “We definitely picked up a lot of momentum, and it feels like we’re keeping it going. If we keep doing that, then I’m going to try to make the Chase. That would be pretty cool to do.”

First sign that Logano and the team had maintained momentum came with last Saturday night’s Budweiser Shootout at Daytona. In the 75-lap, non-points season warmup, Logano kept it clean, stayed out of trouble, filed away some more good experience to take into next Sunday’s Daytona 500, and finished seventh.

Rewind 12 months and Logano came into his first season as a Sprint Cup Series driver with virtually no experience in the new car. It wasn’t so much a problem of not enough experience behind the wheel. It was that he didn’t have notes with the new cars at nearly every track he raced on.

Having a season under his belt solves at least some of that problem, he says.

“It gives me confidence that I have stuff to look at now,” he says. “Last year, what did I have? I didn’t have any notes; I didn’t have anything. This year, at least I can look back and say, ‘I wrote down this, this and this, about this race track, and that’s where I need to start and work from there.’ That’s a big help right there. The other drivers [his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates], they might have a different line, might have written down something different.”

Crew chief Greg Zipadelli has two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship rings, and last year was a learning experience even for him. Zipadelli is candid in his assessment of the No. 20 car’s season in 2009.

“Overall, last season was successful in that we did improve, moved up in the points, we had more top-fives and more top-10s as the year moved on,” he allows. “If we can continue to do that this year, that’s success. We need to do it at a little bit faster rate and with a little more success.

“It’s hard to say how much better you get not racing or testing. We need to be on the track.”

Zippy realizes that his charge is a year older and hopefully a year wiser.

“His driving of these cars…trying to learn how to get the most out of these cars, week in and week out, was his biggest improvement,” he says. “How hard you have to run from lap one to the last lap. It’s not like you can flip a switch and race the last 100 laps. You’ve got to race for everything, use everything you have, but not use it up. There’s a fine line there, and I think that’s what he’s learning.”

The season just past also served to bring the team together around a new pilot. Zipadelli believes it’s been a good bonding experience.

“I think everyone is a lot more comfortable,” he says. “Does that guarantee that there is going to be more success? I don’t think so, but it does allow you to maybe work on other things that will result in more success. I think we still have a lot of room to improve in that area, be better, be closer, work better together, understand each other, encourage each other more.”

Last year at Daytona, Logano was on an accelerated learning curve at the biggest race in the sport. This year, he’s handling it the same way he got through the second half of the 2009 season.

“Yeah, it’s a big race, but it’s another race,” he says. “You can’t get all worked up and nervous. There’s going to be extra jitters because it’s the first race of the season, but it’s not important just because it’s the Daytona 500; it’s important because it’s one of the races that can get you in the Chase. You have to treat each race like that and try to earn as many points as you can.”

As to how he learned what he needed last year, it was a pretty simple process, Logano says.

“The sport is made up a million little things,” he says. “The biggest thing is getting used to the race car and knowing what you want in a race car to make it go fast. The million-and-one other things that you figured out during the season adds up to more than that. It’s a little here, a little there and – bam! – all of a sudden you’ve got something.

“It’s not like a light switch – it doesn’t turn on like a light bulb and it’s ‘Holy cow, I figured it out.’ It takes time, and you take what you learned from the other guys and you eventually put it where it does some good.”

Logano is not lacking in confidence – he’s 19 years old and bulletproof. Asked if the Chase was a reasonable goal for 2010, Logano sat up straight and fixed the questioner with a stare.

“I think so,” was all he said.

Midway through the season last year, there were rumblings about Logano’s performance. Some said he wasn’t ready for prime time, that he was all hat and no cattle, and it stung. Logano laughs about it now, but…

“There were some dues to pay, listening to all that stuff,” he says with a wry smile. “Some people don’t want to be nice to me over here, I don’t know why. I think that what everyone has to realize is, you’re racing against the best racecar drivers in the world. I don’t think anyone in the world could come in here and just take off.

“You have to get used to these cars and the tracks, and I have been saying that I had to get used to that. It doesn’t come overnight, and I was happy to get those good runs and put all that to rest.”

Zipadelli agrees.

“When you build a relationship with a young guy, a good kid and one that has a lot of talent and a lot of love for what he does…when you see those things, you’ll take a lot of those bad days, while learning, knowing that better days are coming.”

For both Logano and Speed, the aim in 2010 is to maximize those good days and minimize the bad ones. And it all starts Sunday at the Daytona 500 for Toyota’s two sophomore talents.

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