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.

But Sunday was about Logano, who has battled through a rookie season that hasn't been easy on a driver who's been talked about since he was in middle school, and whose exploits in NASCAR's support series earned him the somewhat auspicious nickname of "Sliced Bread." Sunday's rain-shortened victory marked just the fourth time in 17 starts this season he's cracked the top 10. For car owner Joe Gibbs, hoping only for gradual progression from his promising yet relatively inexperienced rookie, the idea of winning never really seemed a realistic one.

"We were really looking for just constant improvement, and that's really what we've seen," Gibbs said. "I've mentioned the last seven, eight races we've battled back from some real tough things. We did at Sonoma and we did again [Sunday], and that's what we have been proud of. But what you see and what you saw in Joey, he continues to improve. Also, I think we all feel like at the end of the race, he's always better, running much harder, and I think that's going to bode well for us as we go forward and come back to these places a second time. And so anyway, we are really excited. I don't think you think of a rookie up here lots of times, particularly in Joey's case. So young, no testing, and so I don't think [winning] was our mindset. You hope, you hope you would win one, but I think we were being a little more realistic than that probably."

Even Logano will admit, his entrance into the sport's top level has had some dizzying swings. "I go up and down, up and down, up and down. And that is part of this sport," he said. Not even the trip to Loudon seemed to offer much relief; earlier in the week, Logano was quick to point out that he doesn't have as many laps around the flat oval as many assume he does. He came to New Hampshire with the same mentality he carries to every track, and the goal of simply doing his best.

But winning? In the wet aftermath Sunday, it was clear it hadn't yet sunk in. For someone not yet 20, he seemed more amazed than overwhelmed by what he had accomplished, and where he had accomplished it.

"Obviously, yeah, you want to win at home tracks like this. Zippy definitely wanted to win here. We were talking earlier, he said before this weekend, he goes, 'We've ran good here forever, and it's not going to change this weekend.' You know, he was right, I guess," Logano said.

"I think your first win, no matter where it's at, is huge. Obviously it's not the way you want to win your first race, in the rain, but 20 years down the road when you look in the record books, no one will know the difference. I'll take them any way I can. 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."