Logano broke into the sport as a fresh-faced 18-year-old when Tony Stewart left Joe Gibbs Racing in 2009, but it wasn’t until he joined Team Penske in 2013 that Logano began to shine.

Nineteen of Logano’s 21 Cup Series victories have come at the controls of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford, as have 15 of his 20 poles and 138 of his 179 top-10 finishes.

Now 28, Logano says team owner Roger Penske has played a big role in his growth as a driver.

“To drive for Roger Penske, what an amazing opportunity,” said Logano. “Quite a few years ago, I knew that being with someone like that … you can’t lose because he’s a winner, and you want to surround yourself with winners all the way through. Some of the best advice my dad ever taught me was to surround yourself with people smarter than you. That’s pretty easy for me, actually. I don’t want to be the smartest one here, but I sure look it when I have the right people around me.

“There’s a lot to be said about people in this sport and I feel like we have some of the best people around.”

Logano turned the discussion to his family, chiefly wife Brittany and son Hudson, the latter of whom had one of the best views in the house during the championship celebration.

“There’s a lot of support that goes back and forth and a lot of things behind the scenes that not everybody here gets to know about or to see in preparation for this, because this isn’t something that I take lightly going into a race weekend,” noted Logano. “There’s a lot that I study and look into, and there’s a lot that each individual on our race team goes through to prepare and they’ve got to have a support group, as well. We talk about my family a lot, but this is a long, grueling season.

“If you think about the amount of time everyone needs to take away from their families and how hard that is and how stressful it is, and missing things with their kids and missing baseball games or whatever it may be, hockey games, whatever, graduations, things like that … this is a commitment. This is a long season. This is not easy to do.”

Logano stepped out of his race car on championship Sunday a changed man, not just from winning the title but from every experience he’s had to go through in order to achieve that dream.

Once, he was a kid that got pushed around by the pack. Now, he’s a champion who put the field behind him. But he still showed flashes of that kid who was once dubbed “Sliced Bread.”

“Honestly, I just feel like I’m back to where I was when I was growing up,” Logano reflected. “As a kid growing up, I was an aggressive racer and I was able to win a lot of races. I got humbled pretty quick, though. I got beat up. I got pushed around a lot. I wasn’t fast. I didn’t have any respect. I think that beats up on your confidence pretty quickly, and you have to kind of dig back inside. Every sport is a mental sport, so you have to really figure out how to be strong again and dig out of holes.

“The opportunity to make mistakes is one of the best things that can ever happen to you,” Logano noted. “I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes in front of the media, whether it was things I shouldn’t say or whatever it was, but I have no regrets, either. They’ve all formed me into the man I am today.

“God teaches you many lessons, sometimes the hard way, but I wouldn’t take any of them back.”

At the end of the day, it’s those very lessons that led Logano to a championship, one that was defined by the wisdom and tenacity of a rising superstar who, quite simply, refused to lose.