DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Few drivers on the Sprint Cup circuit logged more time behind the steering wheel of a Sprint Cup car last year than Joey Logano, who in addition to his Nationwide Series duties was a one-man testing terror for Joe Gibbs Racing. Forget "Sliced Bread," the nickname Randy Lajoie bestowed on the teen wonder as he shredded one development tour after another. "Test dummy" was more like it. There's little glory in circling New Smyrna or Iowa for hour after hour, trying out new suspension systems or brake parts.

More than his age-defying Nationwide victory at Kentucky, more than his three Sprint Cup starts, it's those endless laps of testing that have prepared Logano for NASCAR's biggest stage. In retrospect, it proved a prescient move by Gibbs officials, given the ban on testing that followed last season. But it's one thing to navigate the race track all alone, driving a nondescript car on a nondescript oval, searching more for information than performance. It's quite another to step into one of the more iconic vehicles in NASCAR's modern era, on the sport's biggest stage, in the grandest event in stock-car racing, with 180,000 sets of eyes watching to see you live up to your nickname.

No wonder Logano and his bosses at Joe Gibbs Racing are doing their best to temper expectations, although that may be akin to corralling a race horse that long ago burst out of the stable. By now, everybody knows the Sliced Bread story -- heralded by Mark Martin as the next big thing at 15, signed by Gibbs at 16, a championship in the Camping World East regional series and a victory in his first ARCA start at 17, the youngest winner in the history of the Nationwide Series at 18 years and 21 days, chosen by Gibbs to replace Tony Stewart in the team's No. 20 car, and now on track to become the youngest driver to start the Daytona 500 when he takes the green flag in the season opener on Sunday.

It's been a meteoric, record-breaking rise. Logano has won, sometimes with astonishing quickness, at every level at which he's competed. He's lived up to every expectation, even exceeded a few of them. But now, with his first Daytona 500 looming, team officials are urging something not always associated with young race car drivers -- patience. At least publicly, they've gone out of their way to state that for right now, at least, the pressure is off.

"I certainly wouldn't put a lot on Joey," Joe Gibbs said. "We all know stepping up to these cars is a big deal. We kind of told him, 'OK, Joey, set your own pace. Hopefully we're putting the right people around you.' I don't think we've said anything to him, and neither has [sponsor] Home Depot, other than, we just want you to race every one of them as hard as you can and we'll all see where it winds up. I think it concerns you some because of his background, and everybody else saying, 'Hey, you're putting a lot of pressure on him.' But I don't think we are."

Logano's not putting any pressure on himself, either. He admits he's not a goal-setter, preferring to simply do his best every week. His singular target for 2009? Rookie of the year. "I don't know what everyone else expects of me," he said. "... I'm just going to do the best I can."

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We have a driver who's young, but if we put him in the right situation, there's no reason we can't go down there and have a good finish or put ourselves in position to win a race.

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GREG ZIPADELLI

The last time a new driver stepped into the No. 20 car, a rookie named Tony Stewart recorded three victories and finished fourth in final points. Had there been a Chase in 1999, Stewart would have been in it. Under the guidance of crew chief Greg Zipadelli, Stewart served notice from his first qualifying lap, grabbing the outside of the front row for the Daytona 500. In the process, he raised the bar for every rookie to come. First-year drivers were expected to immediately contend for race wins. But Stewart was 28 then, with 36 starts in the then-Busch Series to his credit, and three years removed from a title in the Indy Racing League. Logano is 10 years younger, has 17 fewer starts on the now-Nationwide tour, and is two years removed from a Camping World East championship.

"The reality of it is, he's awesome. He's a great talent. But this ain't easy. This takes some time. This isn't Nationwide. So I think for us, we all realize, hey, he's going to be fine, but it will take a little while. So we're going to get him up to speed and get a good foundation built there," team president J.D. Gibbs said.

"I think we feel comfortable that he is the guy, he is going to be a great talent here at JGR for years to come. For us this year, let's just get the base, get the foundation, get the experience at all these tracks he hasn't been to with no testing, and we'll take it from there. I think we're fine, but we're not looking [to] go win a lot of races this year right off the bat."

A more fitting comparison may be Logano's Gibbs teammate Denny Hamlin, a former late-model racer who at 24 stepped into a No. 11 car that was barely competitive and quickly turned it into a championship contender. But as Hamlin will readily admit, no one knew who he was. Martin hadn't been touting him since he was in middle school. When he reached NASCAR's highest level in 2005, he was fresh off working part time at his father's trailer business, and was tasked with only keeping his vehicle inside the top 35 in owners' points. Surely Logano -- and those who have been hearing his name for years -- have higher ambitions than that.

"Joey's got a ton of expectations, and especially not being able to test, it's going to be extra hard on him to get everything done early in the year," Hamlin said. "That's why he's probably going to have a few more growing pains than you would have normally, if we were testing. But he tested so much for us last year, he's got more laps around the race track than we do. It's just a matter of him and Greg getting the communication down. That's what [crew chief] Mike [Ford] and me did early."

The three Cup starts Logano made last year might have done more to temper expectations than anything else. Logano didn't finish better than 32nd, and during the season's penultimate weekend at Phoenix, one erroneous report arose claiming that Gibbs was looking to replace Logano in the No. 20 for 2009. J.D. Gibbs shot it down immediately. But all told, it proved an unexpectedly rough indoctrination. "It grounds you, that's for sure," Logano said of the experience.

Of course, there were mitigating factors. Two of the cars Logano drove in those events were owned by Hall of Fame Racing, whose somewhat unwieldy technical alliance with the Gibbs organization was nearing an end. Attempts to qualify at two other tracks were washed out. No one who knows Logano sees that brief, uneven chapter as an accurate barometer for which he's capable.

"I know Joey. I feel like Joey is ready," said his predecessor, Stewart, who left the Gibbs organization after a decade to form his own team. "He's a very smart kid and a very good race car driver for his age. I don't think he's going to have any trouble getting used to this series, and he's got a team and definitely a crew chief that's got a lot of experience. He's got all the tools in place that he needs to be good."

Short Shootout

"It sucks," Joey Logano said of the Lap 4 wreck that ended his first Budweiser Shootout. "It's too early. I was just trying to get a feel for it before we went up there and mixed it up with everyone."

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So now it's on to Daytona, a place where Jeff Gordon remembers "freaking out" before his first start in the Great American Race as a 21-year-old in 1993. At Gibbs, everybody knows Logano can drive. The focus is on things like communication with Zipadelli, on being ready to handle specific situations, on bring prepared for the fishbowl environment, on proving to more veteran drivers that his relative inexperience isn't a liability on a fast, sometimes perilous restrictor-plate track. The worst-case scenario is that he does something to lose the confidence of those around him, and has difficulty finding drafting partners on Sunday. Logano didn't get much practice Saturday in the Budweiser Shootout, his first race at Daytona, when he was caught up in someone else's accident and knocked out after four laps.

"Until you're there, until you have to deal with the competition, deal with the stress, the pressures this sport has today, from the media's and NASCAR's requirements to sponsors pulling on you, you can't simulate that," Zipadelli said. "You can't prepare anybody for it. I tried to explain it to him, what he's about to do is what I did seven years ago and have our first child. All your friends are saying, 'Oh, this great, kids are easy, wait until they tell you they love you the first time, and they're so rewarding, and all this.' It doesn't matter what anybody tells you. Until it's yours, until you have to deal with it, and you go through that point in time, you don't know."

But Zippy has a feeling. The crew chief with two championship rings says he hasn't come to Daytona to finish 25th. "We feel like we have cars [that are] good enough," he said. "We have a driver who's young, but if we put him in the right situation, there's no reason we can't go down there and have a good finish or put ourselves in position to win a race."

Wait -- aren't those expectations? Maybe not. Even Logano admits, there's nothing wrong with the equipment. How soon the No. 20 wins again depends on how quickly he progresses, although no one is setting a timetable. "You think about it, I am jumping into a great car," he said. "I do have everything I need to win a championship, expect me not having experience. You guys [in the media] know that, you've heard that a million times. That's obviously what it is. Everyone realizes it. I'm going to do the best that I can and go from there."

That's all Zipadelli can ask for. "I think if we get to Daytona and we progress from the time we roll in until the time we leave, that's a successful weekend, no matter where we finish," he said. "Obviously, we need to finish good, we need some points, we need to stay inside the top 35. And then we go to California, and we go to Vegas, and if we can continue to do that, then that will be success."