Defending Champion Joey Logano Admits He Isn’t a Top Driver Anymore in a Cryptic 6-Word Message

The youngest driver ever to start the Daytona 500, Joey Logano made his first Cup Series start at New Hampshire’s 2008 Sylvania 300. After winning his first Coors Light Pole Award in 2010, Logano then made waves for his ‘Firesuit’ gibe at Kevin Harvick.

Having seen its fair share of ups and downs, Logano’s Cup career shot up after his move to Team Penske in 2013. Sticking with Team Penske, ‘Sliced Bread’ went on to win the 2018 and 2022 Cup Series championship titles. Now in his fifteenth full-time Cup Series run, Joey Logano recently delivered a sad, cryptic message.

Joey Logano’s 6-word cryptic message

After last season’s stellar victory, Joey Logano’s 2023 season hasn’t churned out the desired results so far. With only a single first-place podium finish at the Ambetter Health 400, Logano has been struggling to get up to his championship pace. Now back at the Atlanta Motor Speedway for the upcoming Quaker State 400, the defending champion sat down for a pre-race media presser. During the course of the press conference, media personnel asked Logano how the defending champion evaluates which teams are running well and may put up a tough fight in the playoffs.

Logano answered, “It was similar to this last year.  I’d say if anything it’s easier this year to tell who is gonna be the hitters right now, and a lot of it is the same guys it’s always been.”

Hinting at how Logano feels that he isn’t a top driver anymore owing to his poor 2023 performance, the Team Penske #22 driver casually dropped a six-word cryptic message saying, “You go back and look at it and the best teams, the best drivers are usually up front.”

“Every now and again you may have something that kind of mixes it up or you may have a team that’s fallen off the bandwagon for a little bit, but they usually figure it out.  I don’t see it being much different.  Last year was almost harder to tell because there were so many winners and all that.  Now this year, it seems like it’s starting to see more common guys up front, but the thing now is that the whole team matters”, Logano added, choosing not to namedrop any teams.

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While speaking out his thoughts on team performances so far, Joey Logano even hinted at how the playing field has been leveled in recent years.

Logano – With NextGen, it’s hard to pass!

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Apart from his six-word cryptic message, ‘Sliced Bread’ hinted at how the Next-Gen car has leveled the playing field. While the Gen-6 often saw topping the leaderboards, NASCAR’s introduction of the highly ‘controlled’ NextGen vehicles helped lagging teams push up multiple spots.

Describing how the NextGen car has disrupted the dominance, Joey Logano said, “Before, if you had a fast car you can get away with a slow pit stop, you can get away with a bad restart every now and again because you’re car is fast enough to make it up and the top 10 looked almost the same every time.  Now, boy, if you’re a fifth-place car, but you have 15th-place pit stops all day, you’re gonna finish 12th.  It’s just what it is, so it’s a lot different than it used to be.  It’s not as easy to make up the spots because the field is closer.”

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Sitting at the 10th spot on NASCAR’s 2023 Cup Series standings, can Joey Logano defend his Atlanta crown in the upcoming Quaker State 400 Cup Series race?