Joey Logano has been one of the more controversial drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series ever since he made his debut as a teenager. The reactions to him winning his third championship in Phoenix are proof enough that he is not a fan favorite yet. But is his greatness being ignored unfairly? Former driver Kyle Petty believes so. He compared him to Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson to make a case.
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Petty explained on GoPRNLive recently how Busch has 63 wins and two championships, and Larson has 29 wins and one championship. Logano, on the other hand, has 36 wins and three championships.
He used this stat to defend why Logano should be held in higher regard than the other drivers. He said, “I mean he has separated himself from that pack from a championship standpoint.”
“When you look at it, I don’t know why we don’t want to talk about Joey Logano in the same breath that we talk about Kyle Busch or Kyle Larson or Denny Hamlin and guys like that.”
“We seem to just kind of poo poo. You know what Joey Logano has done. But he has put up some phenomenal numbers.” So, why is it that the Team Penske driver doesn’t get the credit that’s due to him?
He was an easy driver to not like right from the beginning. He got into fights with drivers fans loved, spoke his mind without filters, and employed questionable racing tactics at key points during his career. Petty understands all this. But he disagrees that they’re reason enough to discard his performances and achievements that are right up there with the best.
Are the fans wrong to dislike Joey Logano?
He sees proper hypocriticism in the way Logano is treated by fans for his supposedly “undeserved” third championship. He made a note of this by quoting how Tony Stewart had said that he didn’t even deserve to be in the playoffs when he won his last championship in 2011. But the fans didn’t hate him for it.
Petty continued, “You take Joey Logano, and all we want to do with Joey is tear down and pick out the parts that we don’t like, that we don’t agree with as fans and you pick the little pieces out. You say, does he deserve it? Or not. He got the trophy dude. He’s the three-time… He’s moving on. He doesn’t care what you think.”
Logano has always been someone who didn’t pay a lot of attention to the number of fans that he had shouting his name from the stands. He will move on and try to win a fourth championship as Petty says. But it also cannot be denied that he does get a more than fair share of hate from the NASCAR community. Perhaps, history will be kinder to him.
