Joey Logano is no stranger to the tantalizing dimensions of Pocono Raceway. Logano, the 2018 and 2022 NASCAR Cup Series champion, won just his second Sprint Cup Series victory in 2012 at the Pocono 400 at Pocono Raceway while still with Joe Gibbs racing. Now with Team Penske since 2013, Logano has tacked on an additional 31 career wins for 33 total and has 280 top ten career finishes.
Heading into Sunday’s Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway, Logano has one win in 2024, a victory at Nashville Superspeedway, and is well aware of how he needs to perform for a victorious result at Pocono. “It’s just one of those tracks where the compromise piece comes in quite a bit,” Logano said of Pocono. “You got turn one that’s obviously a lot of banking and pretty fast, you got turn two that’s gonna have a lot of bumps, turn three, it’s flat and long.
So all three take different things to make it work. You just hope you put it all together the best way possible.” Pocono Raceway boasts one of the longest front stretches of NASCAR race tracks as a tri-oval championship track.
Also known as the “Tricky Triangle,” Pocono’s design employs three different radius turns, various straightaways and several degrees of banking. As Logano noted, with a first turn radius of 675 feet and 14 degrees of banking, high speeds will play a factor initially. The back straightaway stretches 3,055 feet.
Turn two has a radius of 750 feet and eight degrees of banking with a straightaway of 1,780 feet before the third turn comes along with a radius of 800 feet and six degrees of banking. The main straightaway at Pocono is 3,740 feet. Regardless of his expertise in the foundational knowledge of the track, Logano said he is searching for a victory regardless of the location.
“It would be great to win; I don’t care where we win at,” Logano said. “But I do love coming up here to Pocono. It’s a beautiful area here, not too far from where I grew up (Middletown, Connecticut).
So I enjoy it.” Logano and the Penske racing team he represents have been on the rise in recent weeks. The organization started June with no drivers qualified for the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
However, Ryan Blaney (7th), Austin Cindric (12th) and Logano (10th) all sit within the NASCAR Cup Series top-16 playoff picture heading into Sunday. Team Penske won three of the five races in June, beginning on June 2 with Cindric at World Wide Technology Raceway. Blaney, who ran out of fuel entering the final lap at WWT Raceway to give his teammate the victory, responded with a win on June 16 at Iowa Speedway.
Logano finished the month in strong fashion, as the 34-year-old won a five-overtime thriller at Nashville Superspeedway on June 30. He also won the All-Star race in May. “We’re moving the right way,” Logano said.
“We just got to keep going, the playoffs are around the corner.” With his next race following Pocono coming in familiar territory, the Penske-owned Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Pennzoil 250 Presented By Advance Auto Parts, Logano seems focused on representing his team well both this weekend and next. “I can’t speak for Roger (Penske) himself but I know that’s a track that we all want to win at,” Logano said.
“We (Team Penske) don’t want to go where, I guess you would call it home turf, and not run well. We want to make sure we have something really solid there. “But I think the race here (at Pocono) is always really fun.
The restarts are crazy, but the strategy is something that really stands out here. “One thing I know about Pocono is that people show up. Campers are here.
They love it. They have a good old time here. So I enjoy it.
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