Logano's rapid ascent a sign of changing times (cont'd)

"It's not like when I first started in Winston Cup. I was in the same boat as a lot of guys when they first get in," Sterling Marlin, 26 when he went full-time in Cup in 1983, told reporters several years ago. "You do anything and drive anything to get in. All you're looking for is seat time. You don't think about winning races, you think about making races. Now, these guys are climbing into cars with winning, experienced teams. You put a really good driver into a really good car, and they are going to get to the front."

Marlin was talking about the previous batch of young drivers to enter the sport, guys like Newman, Kenseth and Kahne. But the same holds true for Logano, and any teenaged driver who may follow him.

"He's going to have a great advantage getting into equipment that is really, really competitive right now," Burton said. "They're not going to have to be searching for something as he's learning. And don't forget, I don't know how many laps that kid has in the [new car], but it's a lot. Everywhere I go to test, he's there. He's got a lot of laps in these cars. The biggest adjustment is going to be how competitive it is. When you run 18th in a Cup race, you're in the middle of a dogfight. When you run 18th in a Nationwide race, you're running really poorly. It's a whole other world. The competition from top to bottom is just so much more competitive. Adjusting to that is going to be the biggest thing."

Management at Gibbs has few doubts that Logano can do it. To them, the off-track issues -- sponsor appearances, dealing with the media, the spotlight on him at all times -- loom as potentially a bigger hurdle for their 18-year-old driver.

"I think for him, the way things are, he's more mature than most guys out there," said J.D. Gibbs, president of the Gibbs team. "From an experience standpoint, we were real careful from day one and we didn't want to rush him. He's been here three years. If it took him three more years to get to Cup, that would be fine. The reality of it is, we watched everything he did, really watching him last year in the Camping World Series and watching him test with our guys. I think what you saw is a guy who, the talent is there. Now, we'll have to work with him. There's a lot of stuff. I'm not worried about the on-track stuff as much as the off-track stuff. That's a lot required of him to be doing all that. With his family surrounding him and our guys, we'll be in good shape."

Like all the other drivers of his day, Burton took the slow, arduous road to Cup success. He did it because the car owners of the time gave him no other option. But with Logano, things are different. And if Burton had a seat open today?

"I'd put him in it in a heartbeat," he said. "How do I say this without being rude -- when I say that I think it was better for me to do it the way that I did it, that doesn't mean you can do it like that today. If you've run in the Nationwide Series for four or five years and haven't had much success, there's not many people like that getting Cup rides today. But that was common when I did it. It's common now to take a kid you think has talent and put him in it. If I were the Gibbs group and that seat were available, that would be my candidate. I'd put him in there and I'd put my arm around him and say, 'We're with you, it's going to be hard, it's going to be tough, but we got your back. Don't try to do more than you can do.' And I'd send him on his way."