Logano has makeup to elevate to star power

Folks, meet your next object of fascination.

You know it's coming. You might have sensed it even before Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

It may still be a year or so away but, what the heck, the kid has plenty of time. And loads of talent. And obviously that winning smile.

The thing about a winning smile is that you have to win once in a while to back it up. Otherwise, it goes into hiding and only occasionally is flashed, or in worst-case scenarios seems to disappear altogether.

The masses like to see it.

Joey Logano wore his winning smile well in Victory Lane on Sunday in New Hampshire. Anyone who can look that genuinely happy while trying to hoist a lobster on steroids is bound to rake in his fair share of new fans, while satisfying the old crowd as well.

Logano is poised to wow them all. He has the distinct look of the next Most Popular Driver in NASCAR.

We're not talking a one-year run here, either. When it comes to the fans voting for their Most Popular Driver, especially in recent decades, it's more like these guys are signing on for multiple terms in office than they are being awarded a single-year honor.

In the past 18 years, for example, there has been the grand total of three winners of the award: Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

There are a few guys who might be able to sneak in a year or two where they win it in the near future. But who else besides Logano is set up for the next long run?

Rightly or wrongly, three-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson is too vanilla in the eyes of many fans, plus he draws the ire of those who pull for others by beating them all too often. Jeff Gordon, quite frankly, deserves to win one before he retires and very likely might -- but he's not likely to drive for more than another three or four seasons at most. Kasey Kahne and Carl Edwards could be candidates, but some fans seem to regard them warily for whatever reasons.

And none of them has as much youthful momentum on their side, nor the absolutely clean slate that goes along with an adolescence well spent, that Logano does.

History lesson

Elliott claimed the Most Popular mantle a record total of 16 times, including 10 in a row from 1991 through 2000. The only other driver to win it at all during the 1990s was Darrell Waltrip, who stopped talking (OK, well, he never really stopped talking ... but stopped offending folks) long enough to win it back-to-back in 1989 and 1990, the only two times he captured the award.

Special victory

For Joey Logano, it may have been an imperfect win but it came at the perfect place.

• Complete story, click here
• Logano scores first victory
• Logano visits SPEED set
• Victory Lane: Historical win
• Press Pass: Joey Logano
• Superstore: Logano gear!

Earnhardt Jr., as most well know, entered this season having won it the past six years in a row. Since 2003, when his run in the popularity contest began, he has won the award almost as many times as he has won races.

The elder Earnhardt was the only one to break the Elliott-Junior cycle, capturing the award in 2001, the year he died during a last-lap accident in the season-opening Daytona 500. Despite the fact that now -- with the benefit of revisionist history and 200-20 hindsight -- many in NASCAR want to paint Earnhardt the active driver as a beloved figure, adored by all, the fact is that while he was still racing he was far more like Kyle Busch than Bill Elliott. That is, he had just as many fans who despised him as loved him.

Despite Busch's perceived status as the bad boy everyone has an opinion on, regardless of whether you love him or hate him, that sort of lightning-rod appeal is not usually what positions a person to win NASCAR's Most Popular Driver award. Not that Busch really cares, of course.

Logano, Busch's teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, may or may not care if he ever wins the award. But he'd better start preparing some acceptance speeches for it, because it's coming.

All hail Joey

At 19 years, 1 month and 4 days old, Logano became NASCAR's youngest winner of a Cup Series race Sunday. Busch, now 24, previously owned that distinction -- having won for the first time when he was 20 years, 4 months and 2 days old in September 2005 at what was then known as California Speedway.

Yet Busch has never seemed as gracious about his position in NASCAR, or life, as Logano -- or for that matter, as Elliott or Earnhardt Jr.

This isn't meant to bash Busch. He is who he is, and NASCAR as a whole is better off for it. The sport needs more guys like him, who make no bones about their passion for winning races -- and their profound distaste for anything less.

It's just that, well, Logano is a different animal. Nicknamed "Sliced Bread" by fellow competitors years ago because he was anointed the best thing since, he comes across in interviews as being appreciative and humble. He's just a kid, and doesn't try to act like anything more, or anything less. But he is a mature kid, one who seemingly has handled replacing Tony Stewart in the seat of the No. 20 car as well as Earnhardt Jr. has handled all the extracurricular stuff that came with inheriting his father's fan base following 2001.

Logano also happens to be enormously talented, with a deep-pocketed, committed sponsor behind him in The Home Depot and the backing of a great racing operation in JGR. Give it time, given the changing landscape of the automobile manufacturer business, and even many of the hard-liners who proclaim to despise Toyota's entry into their otherwise all-American sport eventually will forgive him for driving one.

After Sunday's race, team owner Joe Gibbs, the former winning coach of Super Bowls in the NFL, was asked about his association with the young driver.

"We figure we can keep this going, ride this thing for about 20 years," he said.

He is right. They can.

And you heard it here first. Unless they decide to put a term limit on it or some other unforeseen circumstance crops up, Joey Logano will be named NASCAR's Most Popular Driver for at least half of those.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.