LOUDON, N.H. -- They crowded atop the No. 20 pit box, and waited for the inclement weather to arrive. "There's the rain, right there," Joe Gibbs Racing vice president Jimmy Makar said as he pointed to a gray blob looming over the backstretch at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Crewmen on other teams didn't need the dark clouds to know what was on the horizon. They wasted no time in breaking down equipment, knowing the inevitability that was to come.

“

This is my home track and where I watched my first Cup race. And Zippy, all of the guys, a lot of the guys at Joe Gibbs Racing are from the Northeast, so it's cool to get a win here.

”

-- JOEY LOGANO

Meanwhile, Joey Logano leaned against his orange and white race car in the light drizzle, trying to look collected during what had to be the most nerve-wracking moments of his brief NASCAR career. Friends and family members from his hometown of Middletown, Conn., watched the skies and crossed their fingers, hoping that the gamble to stay out on the final round of pit stops would be the right one. Then the rain came in earnest, a downpour that left puddles on pit lane, had many drivers sprinting for their transporters, and turned a 19-year-old into the youngest winner in the long history of NASCAR's premier series.

And what a place for it to happen -- New Hampshire, in Logano's native New England, the track where he saw his first Cup race as a spectator, where he won developmental series races, where he made his major-league debut last fall. That latter experience, a 32nd-place finish in a car fielded by a Joe Gibbs Racing satellite team, was a humbling and frustrating one. Sunday, though, was a triumphant homecoming that seemed completely unexpected, especially after Logano spun out on a restart earlier in the event.

"This is cool," Logano said. "This is where I watched my first Cup race and where I ran my first Cup race and where I won my first Cup race, so I could not have picked a better place. This is kind of like a home turf place for me, a lot of family and friends here."

That was evident in the crowd that was gathered around Logano's pit box as the cars sat on pit road under a red flag and everyone waited for the storm to arrive. Logano wasn't the only nervous local; crew chief Greg Zipadelli is a native of East Haddam, Conn., and several members of the No. 20 team hail from the Northeast. "It's like going home," Zipadelli said of his twice-annual trips to Loudon. (Continued)