Kyle Busch once joked that he “may or may not have allegedly forged” his birth certificate so he could jump into Legend cars a year early. He got caught, sat out a bit, and the story became racing folklore. Turns out Joey Logano has an even wilder version of the same tale, and he’s never been shy about telling it.

Joey Logano’s climb started way before anyone outside the Northeast had ever heard the name. When he was nine, his dad bought him a Legends car, those little screamers with motorcycle engines. The problem was, you had to be twelve to race them. So they fixed that small detail.

Logano’s birth certificate wasn’t exactly real

“We had a birth certificate… we kind of whited it out and changed my name and changed my age a little bit,” said Logano, on the Doughnuts podcast.

By the time he was ten, the paperwork said he was twelve. It worked like a charm until it really, really didn’t.

They even had a guy on the inside at the records office who was supposed to swap the fake for a new fake. Instead, he just added the second one on top. When somebody finally checked, there were two birth certificates in the file. Not subtle. Logano got busted and had to park the car for a while.

But they weren’t done. A couple of years later, the age limit went up again, so they did the whole thing over. This time, Joey was twelve, pretending to be fourteen. Then he stuffed it into the wall hard enough to need an ambulance.

The medic asked how old he was. Joey, still dazed, answered “fourteen.” His dad, standing there going “he’s fine, he’s fine,” didn’t help. One look from the EMT, and Logano knew the secret was toast again.

Joey never throws his dad under the bus. He just laughs and says Tom Logano saw a kid winning everything against other kids and figured the only way to keep learning was to race grown men. Logano was so good, so young, that people were already calling him the next Jeff Gordon. Mark Martin flat-out said he was the best young talent he’d ever seen. When your kid is that kind of special, normal rules start feeling like speed bumps.

In the end, the cheating didn’t hurt him. It probably helped. Racing angry adults at ten years old taught him moves and toughness most drivers don’t pick up until their 20s. By 18, he was in Cup. By 28, he had the first of two championships. A fake birth certificate and a couple of ambulance rides turned out to be strange stepping stones to the top, and Logano still grins every time he tells the story.

Logano sets the record straight on his new bald look

All that rule-bending talk got extra attention this week when Logano showed up with a freshly shaved head, and fans immediately started worrying something was wrong. He jumped on social media quickly to calm everybody down.

Logano explained he’s had alopecia for years. When he went for the usual end-of-season haircut, the patches were flaring up badly and looking spotty, so he told the barber to keep going until it was all off.

“I am fine, I am perfectly healthy,” he wrote. “Just wanted a haircut at the end of the season… now I got a new do.”

He said he appreciated all the concern and never expected a simple buzz to blow up like that, but he’s good and laughing about the whole thing. From forged papers to a surprise shave, Joey Logano keeps proving the road to being a NASCAR champion is rarely ordinary.