And Joey Logano's Take?

   Joey Logano: at the center of a hurricane (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
   

    By Mike Mulhern
    mikemulhern.net

   BROOKLYN, Mich.
   Joey Logano may be 'the greatest thing since sliced bread,' as it was once put when the highly talented racer, who just turned 20 two weeks ago, first arrived on the NASCAR scene.
   It was exactly two years ago that Logano had his breakout NASCAR win, in the Nationwide race at Kentucky Speedway. And he'll be back there again this weekend, doing the long-distance shuttle.
   And last June he got his first NASCAR Cup win, at Loudon, N.H.
   However Logano has found himself embroiled in a furious debate this week, after another run-in with Kevin Harvick, after a few other run-ins with another veteran Greg Biffle.
    The hot question: what will Logano do next?
    When last seen at Pocono Logano was in Harvick's face on pit road post race, yelling about Harvick spinning him out.
    First thing here Friday morning Logano's crew was as angry as they've ever been over anything....and that doesn't seem to bode well for Harvick and his championship chances.
    Logano himself?  
    "It was last week...it is what it is...I said how I feel about it. And I'm moving on from it," Logano said.
    "Right now we're trying to make the chase, and that’s our main priority."
    Uh, maybe he needs to check in with his crew guys and get their take.
     Logano isn't backing off from his complaints about Harvick's hard moves.
    But then neither is Harvick either, nor Biffle.
    "I don't take nothing back," Logano says. "I'm a man of my word.  I said what I had to, and that's it.
     "I was a little surprised by all of the reaction, and how many people were into it. 
     "I felt like I was done wrong out there, and that's it. It's pretty obvious what happened."

    There's the feeling in some quarters of the NASCAR garage that Logano is so young and new to all this that he should perhaps show more deference, and not race so hard.
    "Well, I am young...but I've been racing a long time," Logano says.
   Logano was 'discovered' by Mark Martin some six or eight years ago, and Martin said back then that Logano was ready right then to run the Cup tour, he was that good.
   Logano is good, no denying that.
   And he just turned 20. And he won his first tour event last June at Loudon, N.H.
   Perhaps there's an element of jealousy here?
   Why don't these guys simply sit down and talk things out?
  "It's harder for me to talk to him than it is for him to talk to me," Logano insists.  "I was trying to (at Pocono), but no one would let me get to him."
    Logano thought he had the last word at Pocono, with the crack about Harvick's wife Delana 'wearing the firesuit in that family.'
    But Delana, a shrewd business woman right at the heart of the Harvick racing empire herself, came right back with a fashion touch – selling limited edition tee-shirts with the 'firesuit' comment logoed on.

    Logano wasn't happy with Harvick at Bristol for spinning him out the last lap in the March Nationwide race, and he said of Sunday at Pocono "eventually enough is enough. 
     "After two or three of them, I kind of had enough of that."
    Logano insists he tries to give-and-take on the track...with the footnote that "when there is one lap to go you can race again."
    Logano at Pocono was racing to finish fifth, which would have been quite an achievement. "When it's down to the end, and you're racing for a top-five, why would you roll over and die?" Logano said.
    "You've got to have that fire in your eye....and that's what I was doing."
    Indeed this has been a good season for Logano, who sits 17th in the points and still wound up 13th at Pocono with a remarkable rally after the spin.
    And Logano and crew chief Greg Zipadelli – who won two championships with Tony Stewart at the wheel – are just 100 points behind the playoff cut, with 12 races to make it.
    So is it over, this thing with Harvick?
    "You never know...." Logano says. "I'm not going to say it is and I'm not going to say it's not."
    The edge between these two, Logano says, "will probably take some time" to soften. "It will probably take a long time."
    Logano says he doesn't understand "what I did to make him so mad....I can't figure it out."
    But Harvick and Biffle both make it clear they think he races too hard too long for position.
   
     One curious side to all this was the reaction of Logano's father Tom, who is seen as something of a 'soccer dad,' a little too involved.
     But Logano naturally defended his father, who got chewed out by NASCAR after the Pocono race, and who had gotten chewed out by NASCAR after a confrontation last year with Biffle.
     "My father, I love him to death," Logano said. "He's there for me.  That's something really cool...a lot of people don't have that. 
     "He's always been by my side my whole life.
    "Maybe it was a position that maybe he shouldn't have been there (on pit road post-race at Pocono, in the middle of the face-to-face). But he's a father, and I bet 99 percent of the fathers would have been there."

 
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 Joe Gibbs (L), the team owner, and Joey Logano's 'soccer dad' Tom (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)