“That Moment Changed Me as an Adult Forever” – Joey Logano Reveals Brutal Tony Stewart Snub

Every NASCAR driver has a legion of fans that adore them. Even someone as divisive as Kyle Busch has one of the most vocal fanbases in the community. Many of these drivers have themselves been fans of older-generation drivers or even contemporaries. One of them is Joey Logano, who was a big fan of 3-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart. However, one incident with Stewart threatened to shatter his devotion, and Logano recently opened up about it.

Logano told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, “There was another driver that I was a big fan of, that did not say hello to me. Walked right past me, and I was a kid and I was so upset that I threw all my stuff in the garbage. That is burnt into my mind, from this eight-year-old kid, forever.”

“It is there, so every time that I see a kid. I’m like, ‘I got to stop’. Even if I’m late, I got to stop.”

“If you’re an adult, I’m like, ‘Sorry bud, I got to go’, but if it’s a kid, it’s just so in my head that. At that moment, I was so upset, and I don’t want no other kid to feel that way.”

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Joey Logano revealed that the “another driver” was none other than Tony Stewart

Admittedly, the Team Penske driver was hesitant to spill the beans. However, he was eventually convinced and revealed that the driver snubbing him was Tony Stewart. Obviously, he was quick to iterate that the Stewart-Haas Racing team owner is quite nice to his fans. However, Logano did acknowledge that there were times when Stewart had a bad day in the office.

He continued, “I don’t know, I was still bummed out. You want me to say it? I’ve tried not to. Okay, well here’s a funny story about the whole thing. I was a Tony Stewart fan. Okay, it was Tony. I’m not going to say that Tony’s not nice to his fans. I’m pretty sure it was after practice, he was walking from the garage to his bus in Atlanta.”

“He has that little area where fans can kind of stack up there. He must have not had a good practice, he looked mad.”

“But I was there in my Tony Stewart gear and I was excited and I wanted to meet him. Ran up with my stuff, ‘Are you signing my stuff?’. He kind of just kept walking and the funny part about that was 10 years before I drove the #20 car.”

He concluded the story by saying, “that moment changed me as an adult forever.”

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Since then, Logano has gone on to eventually replace Stewart at Joe Gibbs Racing. After a few years in the #20 car, he jumped ship to Team Penske in the #22 car. From that point onwards, his career has been on the up and he even won two Cup Series championships.