The Team Penske camp has built a reputation for turning up the heat in the second half of the season, especially when the playoffs roll around. All three Penske drivers have already punched their playoff tickets this year, but Joey Logano is eyeing a bigger prize— the Brickyard 400.
Advertisement
The crown jewel event has eluded him throughout his 18-year Cup career. Logano knows that finding his winning rhythm early could be the key to finally conquering the quad oval.
The 160-lap-long event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, scheduled for July 27, 2025, will mark the second straight oval stop following this week’s showdown at Dover, after a brief stretch of road course battles. Last year, despite rolling off from P12, Logano’s day unraveled when a crash on Lap 109 relegated him to a 34th-place finish.
While his fortunes were better back in 2020, starting from the pole, the now three-time Cup champion managed only a top-10 run, a far cry from the winner’s circle Logano aspires to be in. His closest brushes with victory came in 2015 and 2019, both times finishing runner-up while leading 28 and 14 laps, respectively.
Reflecting on the elusive win, Logano told journalist Peter Stratta, “That’s the one that definitely stands out to me. That is the number one race on the list to want to win just because it’s Indy. The history. How iconic that speedway is. The dream of kissing the bricks is a real thing. That’s the real thing for me. I would love to be in that position someday. We’ve been close many times.”
While Roger Penske’s ownership of the iconic speedway adds extra weight to a potential victory, Logano insists his hunger for this race runs deeper than that. “That racetrack holds enough prestige that it doesn’t matter who you are and who you drive for, you want to win that race. You want to go in the history books as an Indianapolis winner in anything, so that one would be special.”
Logano also shared his recent experience touring the newly renovated Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, urging fans to carve out time for it when they visit.
Calling it “the best motorsports museum I’ve ever seen,” he credited Penske for elevating the venue. “Just the way you would think Roger Penske does things. It is spectacular, so if you’re there, do that. You won’t regret it,” Logano added, “but winning there would be even better than that.”
With an average finish of 12.6 at Indy, the reigning 2024 Cup Series champion heads to the historic track next Sunday, July 27, 2025, with his sights firmly set on finally etching his name into Brickyard history and kissing the yard of bricks at least once in his lifetime.
