LAS VEGAS -- Joey Logano's having fun in NASCAR these days and he's delivering results, like a coming-on sixth place finish Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway's Shelby American.

If he ever gets the experience to match his enjoyment level, look out, he might really go places. And that's the key here, because this kid's career only encompasses 42 races.

“

The last two weeks on the last run we've had the car just about right and able to move forward, so it's cool. I can't tell you how much more fun it is than last year.

”

-- JOEY LOGANO

The fact that Logano is eighth in the championship, compared to 32nd at this time a year ago puts the glee quotient off the chart. Logano just laughed when he really tried to quantify how much he's enjoying this.

"About 20 times the amount as last year," he said. "Last year, at this time I was ready to kill myself and this year I'm definitely having a blast, and that all comes with running good.

"It makes it a lot more fun when you come to a race track instead of dreading going to the next race because 'I don't know if we're going to be good here?' Now I'm pumped up and looking forward to getting back to the race track, so it's fun."

Logano had a lot to be satisfied with after logging only the ninth top-10 finish of his career, but the second-in-a-row after a fifth last weekend at Fontana.

"We did a good job adjusting the race car [Sunday]," Logano said. "We didn't start the race that well. We started sixth and fell back to 17th or so, just spinning-out loose. They did a good job on bringing it back and not over-adjusting.

"Zippy [crew chief Greg Zipadelli] did a good job with improving the car throughout the race. To come back at the end, that's what's cool because you don't want to fall back right at the end of the race. When everyone's going hard you want to keep going.

"The last two weeks on the last run we've had the car just about right and able to move forward, so it's cool. I can't tell you how much more fun it is than last year."

At Las Vegas, the final restart in the season's third race came with 34 laps remaining. The race's seventh caution came just in time to keep Logano, not to mention Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton from going a lap down to leader Jeff Gordon. But in the end, "the youngster" was the only one of that trio to come forward.

Logano restarted 10th and slowly, inexorably came toward the front. To a degree, only the lack of miles kept him from going further. But his consistent lapping at "go time" got a mental calculation going. And actually putting pen to paper brought it into focus.

At 19, in his second full Cup season and with a single win; here's what Logano was running down in the stretch. Five guys: race winner Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin and Matt Kenseth; with an average of 466 Cup starts apiece, nine Cup championships total, an average of 40 Cup wins each and an average age of 38.8.

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."