Joey Logano / No. 20 Harvest Investments Toyota Preview
Nashville 300 at Nashville Superspeedway
No. 20 Harvest Investments Toyota News & Notes:
. LAST MINUTE CHANGE. HERE COMES JOEY & THE NO. 20 TEAM: Due to a lack of sponsorship, the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and driver Joey Logano were not originally scheduled to run this weekend at Nashville Superspeedway. However, a number of factors following this past Saturday’s event at Talladega Superspeedway changed that. First, with Logano’s second-place finish at Talladega, the No. 20 JGR team extended its points lead in the NASCAR Nationwide Series Owner’s standings to 13 points over its JGR teammates, the No. 18 team. Second, a new sponsor jumped on board Sunday evening to make the trip possible. Harvest Investments, LLC & Harvest-Properties.com have signed on with Joe Gibbs Racing for a one-race sponsorship to allow the No. 20 team and Logano to head to Nashville to continue the strong start to the season and continue the chance to run for the Nationwide Series Owner’s Championship, which Joe Gibbs Racing has won three years in a row (No. 20 team in 2008, No. 18 team in 2009 & 2010). The team was originally scheduled to run the first seven races, with Nashville being the first without sponsorship and not on the schedule. Now, with Nashville back on the schedule, the team will run through Dover. As of now, the team doesn’t have sponsorship for Iowa, but is still looking for interested companies.
. THANKS HARVEST INVESTMENTS: Harvest Investments, LLC and Harvest-Properties.com will serve at Logano’s primary sponsor for this weekend’s event at Nashville Superspeedway. “Loyalty goes both directions and this is our way of showing our appreciation to Joey and the entire Logano family for their continued support in Harvest Investments,” said founder Mark Paley. Harvest Investments was established in 1992 to acquire and manage multi-family apartment properties as a means of generating significant cash flow, a consistent return on capital and long-term capital appreciation. Harvest Investments main office is located in Wethersfield, CT. For more information about Harvest Investments, call (860) 529-5158. Harvest-Properties.com is where coming home is the best part of the day. Harvest-Properties.com offers lovely and affordable housing with locations throughout the United States, offering efficient, one bedroom, two bedroom and three bedroom apartment homes. Harvest-Properties.com can assist anyone in finding the perfect place to call home. For more, visit http://www.harvest-properties.com/ www.harvest-properties.com.
. FROM TIME OFF TO OVERTIME FOR NO. 20 TEAM: Members of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team had a number of different plans for the coming Easter weekend. Some were going to local racetracks to check out the action. Others were going to take a vacation during one of their few off weekends. Others were going to spend time with family. However, when word came down Sunday that the team would now be competing at Nashville Superspeedway instead of taking the race off due to a lack of sponsorship, the team got right to work. Starting Sunday afternoon, the team had to start preparing a car that had just been sitting in the shop previously in an effort to get it ready to head to Nashville on Wednesday evening. The team had to go over the car, scale it, set it up and decal it all in just a few days.
. CHASSIS: The JGR team will take chassis #20113 to Nashville this weekend. The chassis was built new at the JGR shops this past off-season and was run for the first time earlier this year at Phoenix. In that race, Logano qualified the car third and finished sixth.
. STAT OF THE WEEK: 1.3 In three-career starts at Nashville Superspeedway, Logano has a career-average starting position of 1.3 and Logano has never started worse than second at the track. Those stats include two poles, coming in 2008 and 2010. His pole in 2008 marked his first-career NASCAR Nationwide Series pole, coming in just his second-career start.
. THE RACE: The Nashville 300 at Nashville Superspeedway (Lebanon, TN; 1.33-mile banked oval) is set for Saturday, April 16, 2011. The race will be broadcast on ESPN at 3:00 p.m. EST, with radio coverage on MRN starting at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Joey Logano Quotes:
“More than anything, I really need to thank Harvest Investments and Harvest-Properties.com for coming aboard to sponsor the event. That is huge, because this team has been running good all year long and to let the owner’s championship points lead slip away because we didn’t have sponsorship would have been tough to swallow. Times are tough now and everyone is having trouble finding sponsorships, so to be able to have a company step up at the last minute because they want to see this team continue and chase that title is huge. So I can’t thank Harvest Investments and Harvest-Properties.com enough. Hopefully, we can repay them for doing this with a win and an even bigger points lead.
“I’m excited to go to Nashville because I’ve always run well there, but more than anything, I’m excited for the guys on the team. They were really bummed at not going to Nashville, especially after the way we’ve been improving week-to-week with a pretty much brand new team. After Talladega, when we looked at the points and saw we had increased the points lead, it was a downer. Then, when things came along, I told them ‘let’s get it done.’ So this is a big shot in the arm for those guys and might just give them the added push to get this No. 20 Toyota back into Victory Lane.
“I love Nashville. It’s just a great place to go. I really wish the Cup cars would race there, but since they don’t, I would hate to miss a race there in the Nationwide deal. I won my first pole there and one of my Nationwide wins came at Nashville, so it’s pretty special to me. I’ve already got one of those guitars, but I’m ready for another one. And we’ve run well there every year we’ve been there. My first year, we got wrecked, but we were running in the top-five when we did. And last year, we were one of the cars to beat, but pit strategy came back and bit us. So the results might not show how strong we are, but it’s probably one of my better tracks. That makes me even more confident going into the weekend as well.”
Adam Stevens Quotes:
“Everyone is pumped at the shop right now, but we know we’ve got a lot of work to do to get this car ready to go to Nashville later in the week. These guys were really down in the dumps on missing out on a race, but when things panned out, then didn’t have any problems getting right to work and doing what needed to be done to make this race happen. They knew they would be putting in some long hours to get this car ready, but none of them had any problems doing so. That is the type of people we have here at Joe Gibbs Racing and that’s what makes this deal so special. A big thanks to Harvest Investments and Harvest-Properties.com for making this all happen. We wouldn’t be doing all this without them.
“Interesting thing about Nashville is that this will be the first time I’ll be going there in race conditions. Working with the Cup team, we’ve never raced at the track. But Joey’s been good there and had a lot of success, so I think we’ll be alright. The concrete surface always throws a little bit of a wrench into the situation and makes things different, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
No. 20 Harvest Investments Toyota / Joe Gibbs Racing Team
Driver – Joey Logano Crew Chief – Adam Stevens Car Chief – Mike Sibley Race Engineer – Curtis Ratzlaff Shock Specialist – Joel Weidman Front-end – Nick Fuller Rear-end – Dave Rudy Tire Specialist – Chris “Yoshi” Jones Engine Tuner – Roger Purcell
Truck Driver – Tim Clancy Jackman – Jason Tate Gasman – John Eicher
Front Tire Changer – John Royer Front Tire Carrier – Brett Morrell
Rear Tire Changer – Coleman Dollarhide Rear Tire Carrier – Eric Groen
