{"id":303379,"date":"2025-11-24T08:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T08:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303379\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T08:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T08:18:08","slug":"joey-logano-took-big-legal-risk-to-start-his-racing-career-motorsport-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/303379\/","title":{"rendered":"Joey Logano took big legal risk to start his racing career &#8211; Motorsport &#8211; Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Joey Logano tells his origin story, it sounds like the kind of wild detour that movie characters take, except this one led to three NASCAR Cup Series championships and a career built on risk, speed and ambition.<\/p>\n<p data-mce-linkchecker-status=\"valid\"><a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-express.com\/latest\/joey-logano\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Logano<\/a>\u2019s climb began long before most fans knew his name. Hailing from Middletown, <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-express.com\/latest\/connecticut\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Connecticut<\/a>, Logano, who <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-express.com\/sport\/motorsport\/191283\/nascar-joey-logano-concerning-new-look-alopecia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">recently opened up on his battle with Alopecia<\/a>, started racing quarter midgets at age six and by nine was ready for the next step.<\/p>\n<p>The problem? Legends cars, little scream-mobiles powered by motorcycle engines, required drivers to be at least 12 years old. So Logano and his father, Tom Logano, rewrote the rulebook \u2014 literally.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a birth certificate\u2026we kind of whited it out and changed my name and changed my age a little bit,\u201d Logano confessed.<\/p>\n<p>At ten years old, his paperwork claimed he was twelve. It worked\u2026 until it didn\u2019t. Their plan included an inside-helped records swap, but the old certificate wasn\u2019t removed. That triggered suspicion and scrutiny. \u201cTwo birth certificates. No more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-express.com\/newsletter-preference-centre\/?view=Solus&amp;mailingListId=9761f86a-69c1-4771-b7da-6a7feddacc61&amp;utm_source=solusarticle\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up to our NASCAR newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The age limit later rose to 14, and Logano tried the same trick again. He taught himself to race against older competition, got in a crash and needed ambulance attention. When the medic asked his age, he gave the fake one. His father knew the charade was over.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t punishment that defined the moment, though \u2014 it was learning. Logano says the experience of battling older, stronger drivers as a pre-teen made him tougher and more experienced than many racers years older.<\/p>\n<p>By 18, he was in the NASCAR Cup Series, and by his late 20s, he had captured his first championship.<\/p>\n<p>The decision to bend the age rule wasn\u2019t about defiance so much as progression. His father saw a driver who out-paced his peers and believed the only way to grow was to compete up.<\/p>\n<p>Logano\u2019s efforts were soon noticed, marked as the \u201cnext Jeff Gordon\u201d and praised by greats like Mark Martin.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the seemingly risky gambit didn\u2019t derail him, but rather helped set the foundation. The advanced experience, the courage to compete early and the willingness to rush in ahead of schedule paid off. When he arrived in the Cup Series and eventually joined Team Penske, he already had an edge most rookies didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>Logano\u2019s early risks have eventually transformed into legacy moments. He\u2019s now a three-time Cup Series champion (2018, 2022, 2024) and recognized among the sport\u2019s all-time greats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Joey Logano tells his origin story, it sounds like the kind of wild detour that movie characters&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[136188,136190,49,48,5793,14088,2332,634,136189,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-303379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-age-rule","9":"tag-birth-certificate","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-joey-logano","13":"tag-legal","14":"tag-motorsport-section","15":"tag-nascar","16":"tag-racing-career","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}