Defending NASCAR champ Joey Logano 'back to zero' as the 2019 season begins
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Joey Logano was so excited to get to Daytona and start the 2019 season that he came to Florida earlier than he had to.
“I enjoy every bit of this,” Logano said Wednesday. “I still love my job … I freaking love this. It hasn’t changed in the last 10-11 seasons for me. I still look forward to getting down to Daytona.”
There’s a very good reason for Logano to be loving his job at the moment. He enters the 2019 season as the defending Cup Series champion. Logano beat out Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. at Homestead for his first Cup Series title in November.
While the memories of that win may still be fresh, Logano isn’t sure that this Daytona trip feels any different.
“I don’t know if it’s any different at all,” Logano said. “It’s nice to have the box checked that you’ve won a championship, that’s great. But like I said, we’re back to zero and we’re not any better than anyone else now. So we need to try to defend that. Our goal is the same it was last year: To win every race we sign up for and to win the championship.”
Logano won three races in 2018 and just two before the final race of the season. It was a total that was dwarfed by both Busch and Harvick (eight apiece) and doubled by Truex (four) entering Homestead. In a season of excellence by three of the last four Cup Series champions, it was the guy who didn’t have a title who drove away from everyone in the final laps.
“It doesn’t change a whole bunch and I’m glad it didn’t,” Logano said of being a Cup champion. “I became busier … What I told my team and I told my wife, that was last year. And one of my favorite Roger Penske quotes is don’t trip on your press clippings. And that’s one of my favorite ones because that’s last year and we need to keep looking forward because we’re past champions in my eyes.”
A win in Sunday’s Daytona 500 would put Logano, the 2015 Daytona 500 champion, in some other exclusive company. Jimmie Johnson is currently the only active driver with multiple Daytona 500 wins. And a second Daytona 500 for Logano would mean he’d become the first driver since Jeff Gordon in 1998 and 1999 to win the final race of one season and the first race of the next and the first driver since Dale Jarrett in 2000 to win the Daytona 500 the year after winning a title.
“I heard that about a month ago and I said well that would be pretty cool,” Logano said of the Jarrett factoid. “We’ll give that a shot. That sounds good.”
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter
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