September 4, 2009
By Rebecca Gladden
It was nearly 110 degrees in Phoenix this week, but the oppressive heat didn't seem to faze 19-year-old NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Joey Logano. "(The Phoenix heat is) like inside the racecar," he laughed. "It'll be all right."
Fortunately, the racing phenom had both heat acclimation and youth in his favor when he visited the Valley of the Sun Tuesday for a special cause: helping build a Habitat for Humanity house for a local family in a downtown redevelopment district.
"It's really neat when you get to come out and do things like this with Coca-Cola and Home Depot and build this house with Habitat for Humanity," Logano told me in a one-on-one interview at the construction site. "I think that's a really cool thing that they do and that I get to come out and be a part of it."
According to Karen Tremper, Chief Development Office for Habitat of Humanity of Central Arizona, Logano's appearance at the job site provided a huge morale boost for the many volunteers laboring in the midst of a sweltering Arizona summer. "It's wonderful. It's generated a lot of energy for our organization."
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Logano Works On Habitat House
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The Habitat house is being built for a single mother and three children with the assistance of the Salt River Materials Group, but Ms. Tremper was careful to point out that Habitat for Humanity provides a hand up, not a handout, to deserving families. The mother who'll occupy the home Logano worked on is required to do 400 sweat-equity hours, including 250 building her own house and 150 on someone else's house or in a Habitat ReStore - a retail outlet offering donated home improvement items for resale.
Before donning a hardhat, climbing a ladder and putting hammer to nail, Logano took time to meet with the media and discuss racing at the event coordinated by Phoenix International Raceway - a track where he won his first official NASCAR race - scoring a Camping World West Series victory at age 16.
Currently 19th in Sprint Cup points with a rookie win in the record books, I asked Joey how his 2009 accomplishments align with his preseason goals.
"I've never been a big goal setter," he admitted. "The only thing I really did is I looked at, 'I want to be the youngest Sprint Cup winner while I have the opportunity.' That's something I'd only have a year and a half or two years to do, so I thought it was something I wanted to accomplish."
Logano has been impressive in his first Cup season, notching five top-10 finishes in 24 starts while also running part-time in the Nationwide Series. He said the steepest part of the Cup learning curve has been the difference between driving a Cup car and any other car he's competed in. "When you get in the Nationwide car, it's like something that you've driven before. I ran the Camping World East Series before that and what is it? It's an old Nationwide car. When you jump in a Cup car, you've got a COT car that you've never driven before and you've got to drive them so differently that, when you go to a racetrack you've been to, it's still like brand new. You drive them so differently that the track almost seems different."
One factor working in Logano's favor now is the knowledge that he's returning to venues where he raced earlier in the season, as he'll be doing this weekend at Atlanta. "At the beginning of the season, maybe we didn't run good in the first half of a race and in the second half we were pretty good, but we couldn't overcome what we'd lost in the beginning. Now, we're starting off where we ended and we can keep working ahead from there. Zippy knows what I want more now and we've got some notes and things like that. If everything goes as planned, we should be a lot better."
By all accounts, Logano is handling the rigors of being a Cup driver as deftly as he did the blazing Arizona sun. Although his website lists his ideal vacation destination as "a deserted island where no one knows you," he said he's really not bothered by the demands the career places on his time. He didn't even mind my question regarding teammate Kyle Busch - something he said he gets asked about frequently.
"Nobody knows the true Kyle. Everybody sees different parts of him and they assume certain things about him. He's really a great guy. He helps me out a lot, believe me. Every time I've got questions, he doesn't just answer them - he goes into detail for me. It's a pretty cool thing."
'Cool' - the same superlative Logano used to describe his life as a Cup Series driver, pressures and all.
"It's cool. It's the life I chose. I mean, what else am I going to do?"
Note: To learn more about Habitat for Humanity or to make a donation, visit www.habitat.org
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