Being ‘the greatest thing since ‘Sliced Bread’ is indeed special. When Randy LaJoie issued the moniker to Joey Logano, he was not kidding around. The present three-time Cup Series champion and 37-time race winner had a thrilling start to his career. Logano won in just his third career start in the Xfinity Series, being the youngest driver to win a NASCAR race at 18. However, to pave his way to this youth milestone, Logano stretched the law a little bit.

Joey Logano is in the spotlight this weekend, being on the cusp of a career milestone. At the upcoming NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway, the Team Penske star will make his 600th start. However, long before embarking on his 600-star journey, Logano had a sneaky venture in place en route to his racing journey.

A forgetful ally foiled Joey Logano’s plan

Well, when it comes to scraping the law, Team Penske has a healthy record. The team’s IndyCar team has especially been in the spotlight in recent times for race manipulations both in 2024 and 2025. On the NASCAR side, Joey Logano’s No. 22 team incurred a fine in the 2024 Atlanta race. Logano used webbed gloves for a greater aerodynamic advantage and incurred a $10,000 fine upon discovery.

And Joey Logano‘s rebellious itch dates back to his younger years. A few drivers have lied about their age to race in NASCAR, like two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch. In 2001, he turned up at California Speedway and dominated a Truck practice, but he was expelled from the main race soon after, as he was just 16, and the race had tobacco sponsors, rendering Busch too young to take part. Joey Logano was involved in a similar incident, but the Team Penske driver was way younger than Kyle Busch was!

In his recent appearance on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’, Logano blurted out the truth about the start of his racing legacy. He said, “You had to be a certain age to drive certain kinds of cars… And so, my dad wanted to move me up. So we made our own birth certificate… Well, I mean, it worked for a little bit. I got busted. You do whatever you want in racing… This is to say I am older. So the day I turned 10, I turned 12. And I started racing these cars called Legends cars.”

Well, we can’t say we aren’t surprised. Logano’s hype when he entered the sport was of a kid who could do extraordinary things in a race car, and racing in a Legends car at 10 seems fitting. However, he’s far from the only driver to attempt such a thing. One instance went so far that an average working-class man, L.W. Wright, got entry into a NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega in 1982 with a fake birth certificate! He ran a few laps way off the pace and was ordered to pit and did so, promptly leaving his car and disappearing ever since. While Logano’s case wasn’t that sinister, he did eventually get caught.

The insider who helped Joey Logano in his Legends racing pursuits turned out to have made a sloppy mistake. Logano continued, “We had a guy on the inside who kind of helped us set this whole thing up and put this in my file… Anyways, he forgot to take the old birth certificate out. So the rumors started flying around like, ‘He’s not really 12, he’s only 10.’ I would just lie about it every time someone asked me. One day, someone looked at my file. Two birth certificates, no more fun.”

Nevertheless, Joey Logano has been having fun for the past three decades. And he intends to continue having it until his spark becomes dim.

Wringing the best out of himself

Well, the grit of a brilliant race car driver can last for ages. Many NASCAR legends have proven that, like 40-time Cup race winner Mark Martin. After winning a 2009 Phoenix race, he became only the fourth driver in the sport’s history to win a race at 50. Although Richard Petty‘s last win was in 1984 at the age of 47, the legacy that Petty laid down was second to none.

Petty owns 200 Cup race wins to his name and a jaw-dropping 1184 starts. He made his final start in the 1992 Hooters 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway at 55 years of age, a race more fondly remembered for Alan Kulwicki’s unlikely championship over Bill Elliott, and also Jeff Gordon‘s Cup Series debut. Presently, Joey Logano has beaten Petty to a significant age-related milestone.

At the age of 35 years, 1 month, and 26 days, Logano is set to be the youngest driver to make 600 starts, beating Richard Petty by approximately six months. And Joey Logano intends to keep this glorious attitude alive for a long time. Recently, he confessed his opinion about when his retirement would be: “I always say as long as I can win. I really feel like that’s the standard for me…My dream has always been to be a NASCAR driver, be a NASCAR champion, and if I can win and be a help to my team, then I want to stick around. As soon as I feel like I’m a drag on the team and I’m not bringing anything to the table anymore, whether that’s on the racetrack or off the racetrack, that’s when I need to get out of the way at that point.”

As long as Joey Logano’s mischievous side does not wear off, we will be seeing him on the tracks. Let us see how the Penske star dazzles us in the rest of 2025.