Mark Martin weighs in on the Joey Logano-Kevin Harvick flap

  Mark Martin, the Judge (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)

  
  
   (Updated)
   
   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   BROOKLYN, Mich.
   If you're a driver running for the NASCAR championship, it would seem logical to ensure you don't tick off rivals, who might want to put you in the wall at some most inopportune moment.
   Maybe some of these title contenders haven't realized that quite yet, given all the fun they seem to be having with 'boys, have at it.'
   Which brings us to the Kevin Harvick-Joey Logano situation, after their second hard run-in of the season. Logano got the worst of it Sunday at Pocono, in a race for fifth the final miles, and Logano also got the worst of it in Bristol's Nationwide race in a battle for fifth in March, on the last lap.
   Let's ask the Judge, Mark Martin, for his view of this case:
   "If I'm Harvick, yeah, I'm going to figure out I've got one coming," Martin says. "If I was Kevin Harvick and I didn't know Joey Logano, I would say yes.
    "I think Joey Logano still has enough integrity to continue to try to make that right, and make that work without doing it.
    "But I might be wrong.
      "I'm not Joey."
   Is Logano just a softie, ripe for the punching? "He is certainly not," says Martin, who has followed Logano for some 10 years now, from well before anyone else ever saw his talents.
    "He's a firm, hard competitor who races fair, with great intensity.
    "It is unfortunate he has had multiple run-ins with a couple of different drivers (Greg Biffle as well as Harvick). I'm not sure exactly why that has happened.
   "If you want my guess, my guess is the rub with Harvick and the rub with Biffle came from Joey racing really hard, not really easy.
    "And him being the new face at doing that tends to get your attention.
    "It might even irritate you.
    "I've had Joey race around me and run so good that I was irritated, 'because Joey Logano shouldn't be able to run side-by-side with me for 10 laps.'
    "Joey hasn't been driving soft on the track and then all of a sudden got run over.
     "Joey's been racing hard.
     "And eventually he will earn everyone's respect.
     "He has earned my respect by racing hard and causing very little problem.
    "Don't forget, most of the guys that come in here and are new at it and race really hard cause a lot of problems.
    "Accidently -- they don't mean to.
     "But they do.
     "And Joey is not.
      "He is earning everyone's respect.
      "It does take time, unfortunately, even for someone as bright as Joey Logano."
     And on pit road at Pocono after the race, when Logano got in Harvick's face over the crash?
   "I was surprised to see his ferocity," Martin says.
   And what about Logano's father, Tom, who has become something of a 'soccer dad' in all this.
   "I loved seeing Tom Logano's reaction...and I'm a dad," Martin says. "And anybody who would criticize that, a lot of them aren't dads.
    "I have a son that competed not only in racing but hockey too. Heck, I stood up one day, yelled at him 'Hit him with the stick!' when he was playing hockey. And the kid's dad was standing to me, and I didn't care.
    "So I'm a dad...and I am a Tom Logano fan as well."
 

    Joey Logano: New to NASCAR, and a hard driver. That all seems to aggravate some of the veterans (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
   

    THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK

    Robby Gordon may have gotten 'robbed' in qualifying last weekend at Pocono, but he's suddenly the immediate benefactor of that huge penalty NASCAR threw at the Travis Kvapil-Bob Jenkins team.
   Gordon's car failed to make the field at Pocono (he was racing in the Baja and had Ted Musgrave trying to qualify) ultimately because Gordon wasn't in the locked-in top-35 in owners points...even though he was 34th in the driver standings and he is an owner-driver.
   So Gordon lost a lot of points by not being in the Pocono 500 field.
   However the NASCAR points penalty on Kvapil-Jenkins knocked them out of the top-35 and put Gordon back in the top-35.
   
   
    NASCAR, after dropping the controversial rear wing spoiler, is now considering dropping the controversial front 'splitter' bumper, that odd piece that rides right at track level that has been used as a device to keep teams from using soft front springs for aerodynamics. Drivers have used the 'splitter' as a device to cut rival's tires. What a new front bumper might look like is unclear, but NASCAR is billing the possible change as a means to help Detroit car makers get more 'brand identity,' in their Cup cars, long a sore point under NASCAR's common template rules. The proposed change might even move Ford, for example, to drop the 'Fusion' logo and switch to the 'Mustang.' In turn, that might prod General Motors to bring a Camaro logoed car into NASCAR.
  
    Joey Logano's guys are still sizzingly over the Kevin Harvick Pocono incident, and point out it's not the first run-in between the two. They tangled at Bristol in March on the last lap when Harvick was trying to pass Logano for fifth place.
    At Bristol Harvick complained "he kept chopping down on me. I don't feel he gave me any room." Logano's version: "I don't understand that at all. It wasn't for the win. We ran together clean for almost the whole race...and then he dumps me the last lap."
    Logano has also had a couple of run-ins with Greg Biffle, at California and Kansas.

   
    This is Michigan....and this track is Detroit's 'hometown' track....so why is Dodge CEO Ralph Gilles skipping this weekend's Michigan 400 and instead going over to Montreal to the Formula 1 race?
   
    So Jimmie Johnson had a Richard Childress ECR engine in his – winning -- Eldora sprint car.
    And Jimmie Johnson also had a Richard Childress ECR engine in his car at Watkins Glen.
    Coincidence?
    Certainly. At Eldora Johnson was driving a Clint Bowyer-built car; at the Glen Johnson was driving for a Grand Am team using Childress engines.

  
   Good catch for NASCAR officials on those trick tire air-bleeders at Pocono? "Even you could have caught that – a car with three flat tires," NASCAR's John Darby said with a laugh.
    In the NASCAR hauler Darby has posted large photos of the illegal valve caps, which have a tiny hole drilled in the top to release excessive air pressure as the tire heats up under racing conditions.
    Tire bleeder valves are legal in many racing series, but not NASCAR. The purpose of a bleeder is to keep the tire at a certain pressure; during racing tire pressure can rise 20 to 30 psi, affecting handling rather dramatically.
    NASCAR officials typically keep a fair tight eye on tires, measuring air pressures at random. But the valve cover caps apparently haven't been as thoroughly watched...until now.
    Word on the street is that a number of such trick valve caps have been circulating in the NASCAR garage this season...so it may be interesting to see just which teams on Sunday are suddenly less competitive, since NASCAR should be more vigilant about tires.

     

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