Youth is served

NEWTON, Iowa – Old age took the first round of Sunday's Grand National race here at Iowa Speedway when Kevin Harvick won the pole over Joey Logano.

Youthful exuberance carried the day, however.

Logano battled and beat one of the toughest active Nextel Cup drivers when he shot past Harvick's No. 33 Chevrolet – which was still stout despite running on seven cylinders – to win the Featherlite Coaches 200.

At 31, Harvick still is considered one of NASCAR's young guns, but his youth pales in comparison to Logano.

"This is the first time I've actually raced with him," Harvick said. "Obviously he's only 16, so he can make you feel really old in a heartbeat."

Logano still is four days shy of his 17th birthday and wouldn't have been able to drive in the Grand National series had NASCAR lowered the legal age this year in this developmental division. In fact, he hasn't been able to drive himself around on city streets for long.

"It's coming up on a year, the 24th (since I've had my driver's license)," Logano said. "It's fun to be able to drive myself around; not (having) to bum rides is pretty nice."

Once he got his license, what kind of car did he buy? A Chevy SSR.

"I've got the air ride on it," he said. "It's all slammed down."

Logano was able to keep his nose slammed down on the track as well Sunday, but the race was not going to be a cakewalk with Harvick, fresh off his All-Star Challenge victory, in the field.

"It was pretty cool (to beat Harvick)," Logano said. "I didn't have nothing for the pole with him. He wheeled it in qualifying, but it was neat to beat him especially after he just won last night (in Charlotte)."

From the drop of the green flag, Harvick and Logano showed they would be the class of the field. Harvick started from the pole, but Logano did not allow the veteran to get too far into the lead, and he scooted past for the first time on lap 35. It wasn't the last time these two drivers exchanged the top spot; they traded the lead nine times before the halfway mark.

In total, four drivers swapped the lead 18 times, but two of these men led because of pit stop sequences. In all, Logano and Harvick changed the lead 15 times.

Logano raced like a veteran, saving his equipment until the end and using pit strategy to get to the front.

"It was a tough race for me to win," Logano said. "Harvick had a great car. We ran hard the whole race."

"I thought at the beginning of the race, he was just messing around with me," said Logano, who took four tires on a pit stop and caught up to Harvick with 30 laps to go. He then beat Harvick off a late restart and drove to victory. "I just kind of saved my stuff there, got an opportunity and passed him."

At 16, Logano already has several years of racing experience in the USAR series, and according to Harvick, it shows.

"He's obviously got a racing background and has been successful at everything he's done. The most impressive thing is that – a lot of time you come to these things and when you're in my shoes you kind of become a target and people just want to run over the top of you, but he raced really well today, and we raced back and forth for the lead and I don't think we ever even touched each other. We raced close and he wasn't a hazard or scary to race around."

The difference between the opportunity afforded to the current superstar and the soon to be rising star has much to do with the health of the sport. Harvick points out, laughing, that when he was 16, he didn't find himself behind the wheel of Joe Gibbs race cars.

"I had just started racing at my little short track," Harvick said. "So you weren't able to race in anything like this when I was 16. It's the progression of our sport, and I'm glad to see they are able to let the younger guys run in this series to get the heavy car experience. That's what our sport's all about."

Drive for Diversity member Jesus Hernandez finished third, with Johnny Bornemann III was fourth and Mike Duncan fifth.

Late model dirt track ace Tim McCreadie had an impressive run as well. He finished 10th in only his second stock car attempt on pavement after starting the day deep in the field in 31st. His Richard Childress Racing teammate Ryan Foster finished one spot further back in 11th after also starting deep in the field in 33rd.