Gained experience brings improvement for Logano (cont'd)

Those numbers add up to a heap of fun, especially if you prevail. Or at least come close.

"Experience is obviously the biggest thing," Logano said. "I think [the difference is] me getting used to the cars, and the team's doing a great job. I think our cars are getting better and me helping the team, giving them better information about all the stuff they need at the race track is really where the good finishes are coming from, so like I said, it's a lot of fun right now."

And part of that is focusing on what he can do, and not what he's competing against.

"I just race," Logano said, his grin widening. "They're definitely a lot more experienced than me, and experience is a big deal. I feel like I'm getting closer to where they are, but you can't beat experience. But we're getting closer and closer every day."

More experience might not have mattered as Logano tried to beat the veteran Kenseth to the checkers. Logano had dogged the 2003 Cup champion Kenseth for 13 laps, cutting a .566-second deficit to .105 seconds with less than four laps to go, when he cut under Kenseth in Turns 3 and 4, but was unable to make it stick.

In the final run off Turn 4 Logano dove to the apron on the frontstretch and inched ahead, but in the final yards before the finish line, Kenseth edged him by a couple feet.

"That was my shot," Logano said. "[Kenseth] got loose into [Turn] 1 on the last lap, he chased it up [the track] and I said 'here's my chance.' So I got a good enough run underneath him to get door-to-door through the corner.

"But it's hard to beat a guy coming off the top. We came off door-to-door and I tried to side-draft him, I slid it down to the apron and I came up just a little bit short. But either way it was still a good run."

It was that, and if you're Joe Gibbs Racing president J.D. Gibbs, you can't stop licking your lips as you anticipate the future.

Gibbs, who was taking a low-key walk through the post-race garage, probably contemplating less-than-stellar 15th- and 19th-place finishes by team leaders Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, respectively, broke into a non-stop smile when Logano's name was mentioned.

"It's just fun to watch [because] the reality of it was, the way he was thrown into it last year, it was tough," Gibbs said. "And so now, in just one year's time, to watch what he's done is really impressive; and the reality of it is, he's still learning. So he's got a ways to go and that's the encouraging part for our guys."

Zipadelli strongly agreed with their boss.

"I think last year at this time, he was worrying about succeeding in this sport, and living up to the expectations of Tony [Stewart, two-time Cup champion for Gibbs, who Logano replaced]," Zipadelli said. "We've got a big sponsor and we had 10 years of pretty good success, so anybody that gets in there -- I'm wondering, 'did I make the right decisions?' starting over [with Logano], you know what I mean? It's just at times it worked, and now we've been able to spend a lot of time talking, working and thinking, after the year was over.

"There was a lot of stress for us to finish in the top 20 last year. It was a big deal to our company and our sponsor and things of that nature, so at the end of the year we felt like we were racing to win a championship. But we were racing the 88 and the 29 and the 31 for a top 20; so once that was done and over with, it was amazing how relieving that was.

Neither Gibbs nor Zipadelli felt Logano needed to be running more events in the Nationwide Series, where he ran the first two races this season, finished seventh and fifth and actually dominated last weekend's event at Auto Club Speedway. Logano's 2010 Nationwide schedule is 21 of 35 races.

"We kinda talked about [running a full Nationwide schedule]," Gibbs said. "It was, 'hey, if we get the Cup side confident and comfortable and you know what you need, then like Kyle [Busch] did last year, go run the whole Nationwide thing.

"[Logano's] young enough and he loves racing cars, just like Kyle does. And so I feel if you got to the point where you feel like you've got a good feel for the Cup stuff, then turn him loose. But right now we're still trying to figure out all the Cup stuff and I think once we get that laid out he can do some more Nationwide stuff."

Zipadelli agreed with that assessment as well.

"You know, last week we ended up with a top five [in Cup], but we didn't qualify as good [19th]," Zipadelli said. "These weekends where we don't have Nationwide, sometimes we get to spend a lot more time talking and working on the little detail stuff, so there's pros and cons to [running Nationwide races], but for us as a group it worked out well this weekend.

"Obviously he's gonna run a bunch [in Nationwide] this year, but we've got a couple weeks there where he's not and that's good for us, where we can spend a little more time with him, going over the detail stuff and looking at Dartfish [computer analysis tool].

"When he gets out of our car it was the last thing he drove and when he comes back and gets in it to qualify he can really concentrate on exactly what he needs to do -- and that's what he did this weekend."