It certainly has been an interesting couple of weeks for rookie Sprint Cup Series driver Joey Logano. Click here for the call by Mike Joy and Phil Parsons of the final laps of the Toyota All-Star Shootout last weekend on SPEED.
The transition from youngster to adult is in full swing for Logano and it will play-out this season in front of the national media. Logano is about to step into the Sprint Cup "blender" where suddenly everything is scheduled and every minute away from the track involves sponsors, the media and the fans.
Thursday evening at 7PM, Logano will be the guest of Steve Byrnes and Larry McReynolds on Preseason Thunder from the new SPEED HD studios in north Charlotte.
In the past, Logano has done very well on TV with his quick smile and good sense of humor. In a way, Thursday marks his first official TV appearance as a Cup rookie and the new pilot of the Home Depot car for Joe Gibbs Racing. Luckily, he is with two TV veterans in Byrnes and McReynolds.
Logano is about to be introduced to a wide variety of TV appearances and interviews with a brand new agenda to discuss. This time, he will be directly in the line of fire where on-track performance and off-track lifestyle are concerned.
His TV exposure in 2008 was a mixed bag of polite interviews and several feature reports about his rise to the top at such a young age. Things really heated up when Tony Stewart asked for and was granted his release from JGR late in the season. Logano was suddenly out in the media spotlight fulltime.
It was last summer on the ESPN program E:60 that reporter Tom Farrey put together a feature that showed several different sides of the Logano puzzle. It was clear he is a talented driver with good family ties. Farrey reported that the Logano family had invested over one million dollars in bringing their son along in the racing world.
Still, his parents appear to be very nice and this young man may be just the breath of fresh air that the fans and the media need during this tough time. Byrnes and McReynolds will get to set the table for the season with their interview on SPEED Thursday evening.
Friday on Preseason Thunder the program will offer a report on the impact of Toyota on NASCAR and Byrnes will host the final episode of this program for 2009. All NASCAR TV comes to a grinding halt for Super Bowl Weekend and then both SPEED and ESPN2 start a long ten months of coverage next week as NASCAR ramps-up for Daytona.
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