Joey Logano continues to look for improvement each weekend

[media-credit id=26 align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]With this being a contract year for Joey Logano, it is apparent that he needs to perform to be able to resign with Joe Gibbs Racing. Logano has been doing just that as last weekend at Dover, he finished eighth for his second top 10 in the last three races.

Logano says that success goes back to Darlington at the beginning of May as a testament to how his relationship with crew chief Jason Ratcliff has been improving. They came together at the beginning of the 2012 season after doing a couple Nationwide Series races together last year.

“We really didn’t know each other that well but we worked enough together to know that we do like each other,” Logano says. “We did work together in a couple of races pretty well. But there is a learning curve there. There’s a learning curve between the two of us getting to know each other and Jason getting over here and working with Sprint Cup cars and Sprint Cup races and longer races, all that stuff.”

Logano feels that they are working through that and that’s why they have been improving each week as they’ve learned from their mistakes.

“We are definitely making a lot of gains, Darlington for us was a really good race,” Logano says. “We felt like we could have finished even better than where we finished there, so we were excited about that.”

He says they did struggle at Charlotte, though were able to figure out what they need to do for the future. Then at Dover last weekend, he says that eighth place is a good finish despite losing some track positions at the end of the race and having a problem with the ACU.

“I feel like we were even better than that,” he says. “We just have to look at the positives that come out of every weekend and learn from our mistakes which we have been doing and that’s how you get better.”

On the Saturday before the Sprint Cup race last weekend, Logano was able to come home with the Nationwide Series victory. He says running well in the Nationwide car helps himself out as a driver due to improving the confidence level. He adds that you’re also able to learn things that you can transfer over.

“When you’re on the same tire, cars are pretty similar, especially on a smaller racetrack, the cars are more similar,” he says. “So you can kind of learn some things throughout the day that you can carry over into your Cup program.”

He adds that running the Nationide Series is also a lot of fun, but you got to stay focused as it can get confusing with how busy you are.

“I just think it’s a game to be able to do it, and Dover for me has been one of my better racetracks in the past, too, so I felt like either way we were going to have some good runs,” he adds.

Now heading to Pocono, it’s a whole new ballgame with the new pavement that was laid down on the triangular oval in the Spring.

“There’s a lot of things we are worried about,” Logano says. “I think a lot of us learned a lot of things when we went to Phoenix with new asphalt there, and seeing how long it took for it to rubber in.”

The driver of the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota was one of the drivers who took part in the tire test and he says the track rubbered in pretty quickly.

“I felt like by the end of the two-day test this we were starting to be able to kind of move the groove up a little bit,” he says. “I think when you get 43 cars out there, I think you’ll really be able to see the track widen out a little bit. “It actually came to us pretty quick. I was surprised, I thought it was really icy out there and no rubber. But I Goodyear is going to bring a good tire, will have a lot of grip and the track will widen out.”

Logano adds that once it widens out, he thinks there will be good racing and the track will change quite a bit from practice to race time.

Logano is one of the drivers that is always on twitter staying connected with the fans. His dog, Isla, even has her own account after her popularity sparked. A new partnership between NASCAR and twitter is supposed to build on that connection that is already there.

“I think it’s really cool what we are trying to do, giving the fans more inside access to what’s going on behind the scenes in a NASCAR race and to see more of the Tweets from the drivers and media members, crew guys, whoever involved with racing,” Logano comments. “I think that’s really cool for the fans to be able to see that, because most of the time, we have something interesting to say. So, it’s cool. For me, I’ll just be trying to Tweet as much as I possibly can, and keeping people updated and sending pictures out and stuff like that. I have fun doing that.”