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Why Joey Logano Thinks NASCAR Needs Some New Rules Changes
The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champ is a firm believer that the time has come to spice things up.
He may have been bounced out of the playoffs in the Round of 16, but that doesn’t mean the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano is pumping the brakes when it comes to speaking his mind.
In a recent interview with Sirius XM NASCAR Radio, Team Penske’s veteran wheelman of the No. 22 Ford Mustang shifted into high gear when proposing ideas to make NASCAR’s top flight more dynamic and more entertaining for everyone involved.
"It’s a spec car [the Next Gen car], everyone's got the same stuff, so they're gonna be close,” explained Logano in the interview. “What you do to change it up some? Change the rules; change the downforce levels. Take a bunch of downforce off of it.”
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The 33-year-old native of Middleton, Connecticut has bold suggestion to achieve such an impactful result.
“You get rid of the diffuser – oh boy, we’re starting all over; everybody’s starting all over,” stated Logano enthusiastically. “That would be huge! That would be a massive change as far as car setups.”
Logano backs up his answer by revealing how that would drastically affect the proximity of cars to one another during a race, thus elevating the overall thrill of the entire show.
“The field would be more spread out as far as speed, and that creates better racing,” he added. “Everyone thinks the closer the cars are the better the racing is. I don’t know. There’s a happy medium in there somewhere, right? …You don’t want it to look like F1 where there’s one car that’s significantly faster than the rest of them, and then you have the same winner every week.”
The flipside of the coin is another extreme, one that Logano says is problematic for drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series because it can dampen a race's dynamism.
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“If they all run the same speed – we’re the opposite end of that – we all run the same speed, so it’s really hard to see a lot of racing that way. I think if you can change the rules up every couple of years – something big, like big rules changes – I think that creates some separation in the field which ultimately creates better passes and racing, I think.”
As a two-time champion in NASCAR’s top flight, Logano knows how to win, which makes his early, unceremonious fallout in this year’s playoffs all the more frustrating. Still, champions are champions for a reason, and Logano knows exactly how to channel that dissatisfaction and use it as a tool to hone his speedy skillset.
“The fact that there’s frustration does not bother me,” revealed Logano later in the interview. “That’s a good thing. I’m glad people are pissed off about it. I’m angry, like really angry about it, and that’s a good thing. There’s nothing wrong about being mad about not being good. That’s a good thing that you’re mad about it, but how you approach it, like I said, you gotta be a team, you gotta work together, and you gotta be honest with each other, no matter who it is. Let’s talk it out and really look at every little piece there is to try to get better.”
The other part of failing to meet the caliber of success this season Logano has grown accustomed to is that he’s tasted defeat before, making a rebound all the more possible.
“It’s hard, but we’ve all been here before too,” continued Logano. “That’s the other piece that I think helps us a little bit along here is that we’ve been in the trenches before. We’ve been down here before, and we’ve dug out, and we’ve become stronger because of it.”
“So, here we are. We’ll fight through it again. It’s the not the same issues we’ve fought before because it’s a whole new car and all that, but we’ll fight through it, we’ll figure it out, and we’ll be stronger because of it.”
Adversity – the building blocks of not only strength but character as well.
