Joey Logano, out of a job at 22, Daytona 500 champ at 24

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – They dubbed him "Sliced Bread" because he was, you know, supposed to be the greatest thing since …

They predicted he'd be "one of the greatest that ever raced in NASCAR." He was 15 at the time Mark Martin said that. Teams waged a recruiting war for him, like he was a five-star college football recruit. Everyone counted down to his 18th birthday when he could finally run in the Sprint Cup Series and, by expectation, dominate the Sprint Cup Series. The marketing and promotional teams went with all of it. And then some.

A kid's going to follow along with all of this, of course. The legends say I'm going to be a legend? Who doesn't want to be LeBron?

Joey Logano was put on a path to be LeBron, seamlessly moving from high school kid to professional star. The only problem was Joey Logano wasn't LeBron.

He was still young, still a kid, still a bit goofy and worse, it just doesn't always come as easy as everyone predicts. This isn't a team sport in the truest sense. There's never anywhere to hide. There are grown men, fighting for their careers, looking to run you into oblivion, if not bump you into a wall.

Logano won just twice in his first four full years on the Sprint Cup level and suddenly at 22, he was essentially getting fired.

Joey Logano won the Daytona 500 Sunday and for everyone who wondered why it took so long, it's worth noting that at age 24, he's the second youngest to ever roll into Victory Lane here. So what if it didn't happen overnight.

"This is my seventh 500," Logano said, which seems impossible.

This was a victory about all that ability continuing to come together in front of NASCARs eyes, part of a career arc that suddenly has turned what was about to become a cautionary tale of too much, too soon into a championship contender for a long time to come.

It's also a victory about staying the course and finding your footing and keeping the faith and never apologizing for the journey that got you here, let alone all the hype and expectations the rest of the world put on you when you were too young to know how to stop it.

"It was an opportunity for me to regroup, be who I wanted to be as an adult, not an 18-year-old kid anymore," he said of losing his Sprint Cup ride in 2013, when he was essentially let go by Joe Gibbs before getting an opportunity to drive for Roger Penske.

Who he wants to be is freshly married and in control of his professional life. He just wants to work hard and drive. No more Sliced Bread. He knows he isn't that and never was. His new motto: "effort equals results."

Mainly he wants to be true himself and let that be enough. This is a sport with roots to bootleggers and a race that often resulted in drivers drinking all night down by the beach. How's Joey Logano going to celebrate?

"To be honest with you, I don't know how to party," he said.

A victory usually ends with he and his wife of two months sharing a glass of wine as they re-watch the race.

Boy wonder is a grown man, through the fire and proud of what it made him.

"It's just a combination of a lot of things," Logano said. "Sometimes God just throws you in situations and you don't know why and you just have to roll with the punches and it turns out to be the best.

"I think it's no secret that I probably got thrown into this series too young, [too] inexperienced. I didn't know what I had to do [to] start working my way up."

The easiest thing for Logano to do when the struggles came was to blame others, to doubt himself, to fall in ways that aren't easy to come back from. This is an old storyline, something out of ancient mythology. We've seen these train wrecks. We'll see them again.

Instead, he steadied himself and kept trying to get better and better, no matter how hard it is to learn through the lumps. You want to develop the hunger of a champion? Try basically losing your dream job at age 22, staring humbly at a 2013 season without a ride, Joe Gibbs Racing all but giving up on the promised one.

"Worrying about winning a race and having a job are two different things," Logano said of eventually hooking up with Penske Racing. "Without going through those other points, it would never make me the person I am today on and off the racetrack.

"I'm thankful for it, to be here going through all that."

Logano could have pulled some how-you-like-me-now act on Sunday. He could've gloated in victory. He could've noted how all the doubters fueled him.

He did none of that. The guy is just too nice, too happy, too inner-focused.

"He's a genuinely a good person," crew chief Todd Gordon said.

Logano won five times last year (after a combined three in his previous five seasons in Sprint Cup) and turned into a Cup contender. If not for a bad pit stop in the final race at Homestead, he might have won the title.

This time he won the big one on this sun-splashed Sunday by holding off his arch-rival, 2014 Cup champion Kevin Harvick, who just bested him for the title last November and who he clashed with a couple weeks back at an all-star race.

It's been astounding to witness, a career comeback that pretty much no one saw coming.

"He's a different driver really," said Denny Hamlin, a former teammate at JGR who finished fourth Sunday after a green-white-checker restart ended in a caution with half a lap to go. "Every single weekend you know you're going to have to beat the 22. That's something we didn't say about Joey just three years ago."

When they talk about the young stars in NASCAR, they rarely talk about Logano; he's been around for too long, and been whispered about for so many years prior.

Yet here he is at just 24, and now with all the experience, the good and the ugly, you could ever ask for. Here he is with a Daytona 500 in the bag.

"I feel like I've got over 20 years left in my career," he said.

He sure isn't going to get derailed now.

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