Joey Logano and the No. 20 GameStop Toyota will make their return to Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for this weekend’s NASCAR Nationwide Series’ Napa Auto Parts 200 after skipping the event in 2009 to focus on Logano’s rookie season in the Sprint Cup Series. Back in 2008, when Logano last visited the 2.709-mile road course, he had a stellar run going in what was then his first-career Nationwide Series road course start. Logano was running in the fourth position under caution and during a heavy rainfall when poor visibility out of his front windshield resulted in Logano hitting a stalled car on the track. The race was red flagged and called official just one lap later, but the wreck dropped Logano from fourth to 17th in the final rundown.
While most of the drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series will spend their final off-weekend of 2010 relaxing, Logano will be doing what he loves the most, going for another win. Logano has raced in two NASCAR Nationwide Series “stand alone” events in 2010, coming at Nashville Superspeedway and Kentucky Speedway. Logano won the pole at Nashville before ultimately finishing eighth. In Kentucky, Logano won the pole and the race, the first driver to ever win three-straight poles and races at the same track.
Prior to this season, Joey Logano’s best-career finish in a road course event had been a seventh. However, Logano has continued to work on his road course prowess and it showed just a couple of weeks ago, when Logano qualified the No. 20 GameStop Toyota second at Watkins Glen International and raced in the top five all afternoon long, eventually coming home in the runner-up position to road course veteran Marcos Ambrose. In fact, Ambrose later said Logano was the only car all afternoon long that was able to push him during the event.
Stat of the Week: “79%“. Logano’s 10th place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway last weekend was the 45th top 10 finish of his NASCAR Nationwide Series career. That has come in just 57 career starts, giving Logano a 79 percent rate of top 10 finishes behind the wheel of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing machine over the course of his Nationwide Series career.
Could it be the GameStop Car?: The Joe Gibbs Racing team will once again bring chassis #2077 to Montreal. That chassis has been Logano’s primary road course car since joining the NASCAR Nationwide Series, including Logano’s second-place finish at Watkins Glen International earlier this month. Chassis #2055 will serve as the team’s backup.
Featured on the No. 20: GameStop store #5802, located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will be the featured store on the lower rear quarter panel at Montreal.
Logano’s Season-To-Date NASCAR Nationwide Series Stats:
|
Starts
|
Wins
|
Top 5
|
Top 10
|
Poles
|
Laps Led
|
Earnings
|
Avg. Start
|
Avg. Finish
|
|
16
|
1
|
9
|
15
|
4
|
546
|
$605,755
|
5.4
|
5.3
|
Logano’s Career NASCAR Nationwide Series Stats:
|
Starts
|
Wins
|
Top 5
|
Top 10
|
Poles
|
Laps Led
|
Earnings
|
Avg. Start
|
Avg. Finish
|
|
57
|
7
|
27
|
45
|
11
|
1278
|
$2,202,734
|
7.8
|
7.5
|
Logano’s Career NASCAR Nationwide Series Stats at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
|
Starts
|
Wins
|
Top 5
|
Top 10
|
Poles
|
Laps Led
|
Earnings
|
Avg. Start
|
Avg. Finish
|
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
$39,668
|
10
|
17
|
Previous results at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Joey Logano Quotes:
“I’m actually excited to go to Montreal because I think we can really build on our finish at Watkins Glen a few weeks ago. I’ve never considered myself much of a road course racer, but when you go out there and you run competitive and show that, with a little added improvement you can contend for the win, it gives you a lot more confidence. But, I’m also going into the weekend knowing that Montreal is a much more technical course then Watkins Glen. Watkins Glen is like the speedway of road courses. Montreal is more like Infineon where as it’s much more technical. So I’m sure it will be a challenge, but I also feel like I’m a lot better now and I have a lot more confidence, which means a lot in this sport and on the road courses.
“I’m also ready to come back and redeem myself after what happened here back in 2008. We had a good car that day. I don’t think we were going to win the race, but we were going to finish in the top five and maybe even the top three. And that would have been like a win for me being that it was my first road course race and that we spent most of the race running in the raining. But then the rain got worse and we wound up running into a stopped car on the track that didn’t have its brake lights working. I couldn’t even see out of the windshield. So we were just stopped out there with a lot of damage and then they called the race the very next lap. So I feel like this place owes me something.
“It’s always cool to go somewhere totally different too. I mean, doing what we do, we get to see a lot of the country, from New England to Southern California. But there is something very different about coming to Montreal and it’s cool to get to see. I mean, it’s a whole different country and a whole different lifestyle. So many people speak French, people are really nice and the sites are just different. Everything is a little out of the ordinary of what we see on any other given weekend, and that is cool to get to be around every now and then.”
Kevin Kidd Quotes
“This is going to be an interesting weekend and I’m really looking forward to seeing what we have when we unload. Joey has a lot more confidence since he race so well at Watkins Glen. Plus, with the disappointment that he had at Bristol last week where he feels like a race was pretty much taken from him by another competitor, I think he’s really hungry and he’s going to drive that much harder. So it could be a very interesting weekend for the No. 20 GameStop team.”
“We’ve made some big improvements on our road course program, and we learned a lot with Joey. But every track is different, so there is only so much you can take to the next race. Every weekend is a different animal and you can’t get too stuck up on trying too much from the weekends before. It just gives you a good baseline to start at and then you go tweak from there. That is what we are going to do in Montréal. We just want to give Joey the best car we can and let him do the rest, which we all know he’s capable of.”
Saturday, August 28, 2010 Sessions
- NAPA Auto Parts 200 presented by Dodge practice no tv at 9 am
- NAPA Auto Parts 200 presented by Dodge final practice on ESPN2 at 11:30 am
- NAPA Auto Parts 200 presented by Dodge qualifying on ESPN2 at 5 pm
Sunday, August 29, 2010 Session
- NAPA Auto Parts 200 presented by Dodge on ESPN2 at 2 pm
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