Team Penske star and Cup Series champion Joey Logano is yet to visit the victory lane in a points-paying race this season. With only a handful of races remaining for him to secure a win and fix his spot in the playoffs, he goes to the Iowa Speedway this Sunday. Though he is not the clear favorite to win, he has an edge over the others thanks to his performances on new tracks.
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Logano has always excelled in tracks that are freshly paved on the calendar. He won the pole recently on the repaved Sonoma Raceway, he won $1 million on the repaved North Wilkesboro short track, and he won in the inaugural races at the L.A. Coliseum and the World Wide Technology race back in 2022. With more exploits like these, he heads to the Iowa track, for its Cup Series debut.
Should he win on Sunday, it will be a wholesome moment for him. The reason for that is that the first ever NASCAR-sanctioned race in the Iowa Speedway – in an earlier version of the ARCA Menards Series East – was won by Logano in 2007. Additionally, he also turned some laps on the track in 2013 when qualifying the #22 Team Penske Ford for an Xfinity Series race.
Not only is the Iowa Speedway a newbie to the Cup Series but it is also a mystery to overcome for the drivers. It was recently repaved through the corners to make up for some issues that NASCAR found on the surface. This has created a challenge that drivers will have to figure out on the move through the race. “Until you get there, you don’t really know. It’s probably the most interesting repave-ish thing that we’ve seen,” Logano noted in a team release.
Though the situation is as unique as it gets, he will have to wait until he gets on the track to see how his car rides on it. He continued, “Good or bad, I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Going off the tire test at Wilkesboro, I thought that was gonna be a single-lane race that wasn’t gonna have any passing, and I was completely wrong about that. The track was up to the wall, so who knows? Maybe things have changed. You just don’t know.”
Logano’s performance on short tracks in the NextGen car has been amongst the best in the field with an average of 10.77. Could he turn his luck around finally and secure a victory in the 2024 season? Things are bound to turn interesting for him at the Hawkeye State regardless of whether he does or not.
