Joey Logano says NASCAR has a bad nostalgia habit and 'old Bristol' is the poster boy

Joey Logano says NASCAR has a bad nostalgia habit and yearning for the ‘old Bristol’ to return is the perfect example.

The sport’s Cup Series superstar will return to the iconic Tennessee track this weekend for Sunday’s Food City 500 (3pm ET, FS1).

Three-time Cup Series champion Logano says everything in life comes in cycles, and he’s been around long enough now to know that all too well.

As he prepared for the action at Bristol this weekend, Logano spoke to Jeff Gluck’s Gluckcast and the conversation (of course) got round to whether things were better at ‘old Bristol’. Logano for one is not so sure.

He said: “There was a moment where everyone thought that every car needed to be glued to the bottom like the old Bristol and the only way to pass someone was to knock them out of the way and that’s what good racing looked like. I don’t know if that’s the case.

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Joey Logano on 'the good old days'

“Like we have a habit in our sport of always going back and saying ‘those were the good old days, those were better than what we got now’.”

While Logano questions whether the good old days were in fact that good, he also points out that many things have changed to spoil the party for the daydreamers. Notably the much-maligned Next Gen car.

“Was the old Bristol great? Sure, well there’s a lot of variables that were different too though. Not just the track now, like the cars are way different, you know the bump and run is a lot different. It’s hard for us to get to the back bumper of someone in front of us now with the way the Next Gen car is - hard to even get there.

“If everyone’s running the same line and you can’t even get to the guy to move him out of the way, is that better? And now you gotta knock him out of the way where before you kind of lifted em up because they had that shovel front nose right? Where you kind of lift him up - it didn’t take much to move him.”

'I've seen it happen before'

Logano, now 35 years old and a seasoned veteran of the sport, has heard this familiar ballad throughout his tenure in Cup series combat. It’s starting to get old because he’s already been through more than one cycle.

“I just don’t know like when we say like ‘make things back to the way they used to be’, I don’t know if that’s always right. But that’s the old man in me that’s lived through it once before.

“That’s what’s starting to happen is, I’ve seen it happen before.”