Charlotte: Joey Logano preview

Huntersville, N.C. -- Everyone wants to be the best in the neighborhood at something. Kids want to have the fastest bike. Mothers want to have the most-beautiful garden. Fathers want to be the "master griller." It becomes a type of a badge of honor when you can protect your own turf.

The NASCAR "neighborhood" is the Charlotte, N.C. area. An overwhelming majority of teams and employees call this area home. It was also the site of the first NASCAR race in 1949. The racing tends to take on a different meaning when it becomes Charlotte's turn to host the action, as it does twice a year at the 1.5-mile track just outside the city limits. Bragging rights take the place of points and pride takes the place of trophies and prize money.

Joey Logano and the No. 20 GameStop Toyota team will head into this weekend's race looking to continue their success on "intermediate" tracks, like Charlotte. Logano picked up his first career Nationwide Series win at the Kentucky Speedway in 2008 and his second at the Nashville Superspeedway in April. Both tracks are similar in size and shape to Charlotte.

Joey Logano Quotes

"Charlotte is one of the coolest places to race. I'm from Connecticut and I still consider Loudon my 'home' track, but I live in the Charlotte area now and that puts a special meaning on this place. This is the center of our sport. Everyone wants to win here so badly because it gives you huge bragging rights over the other drivers. The trophy and the points are nice, but I think we would all race for nothing at Charlotte. It's a lot like Darlington with the amount of history that it has. It also gives you a nice break after the start of the season where you're still racing, but at the same time you are home for two weeks. There is just a lot to look forward to when we're racing at Charlotte."

"To win at Charlotte would be one of the biggest moments of my career. The GameStop Toyota has been strong on the 1.5 to 2-mile tracks this year so we feel pretty confident going into Saturday's race. We qualified really well last fall and led quite a few laps. Hopefully we'll get a better finish than we did in that race because we had a car to win, for sure. With the tapered carburetor spacer on these cars you have to make sure that you keep your momentum up every lap. Charlotte has developed a second, and sometimes third, groove that gives you plenty of room to race and pass. Dave Rogers (crew chief) does a great job in giving me a car that I can move around the track with and we've been able to grab some good finishes because of that."

Chassis Info
Primary: JGR #2093
History: Logano drove this car to Victory Lane at Nashville in April. That was the first race for the chassis.
Backup: JGR #2089

-credit: jgr