Verity Logan

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Verity Logan
150px
Age 45
Nationality SCO.png Scottish
Car # 77
Years Competed 1999-2012
Current Team Tom Delgado Racing
Former Team(s) Atlantic Motorsports
Championships 0
Pole Positions 3
Wins 1
First Race 1999 Monaco GP
First Win 2012 GP of Monaco
Last Win 2012 GP of Monaco
Last Race 2012 New York GP
Twitter @VerityL
Dash Cup Driver
 
 
Stephanie is not a nice name! Verity is a much more... pretty name, so you will call me that!
 

 

—Verity Logan, talking to Ben Atkins when discussing her contract.

 
 
13 years of trying; she's done it, MRD have done it.
 

 

Todd Benatar during the 2012 GP of Monaco broadcast after she won.

Verity Logan (born Stephanie Logan, January 4, 1979 in Edinburgh, Scotland) is a Dash Cup driver. She drove the No. 77 MRD Motorsports car for the remainder of the 2012 season, and was slated to return to the car for the 2013 season before suffering a serious injury in the American exhibition tour. She will miss the entirety of 2013.

Early career[edit | edit source]

Logan started off her career when her father bought her a street stock in 1993. At first, she neglected it, but her father continued to bug her about trying a single race, and so, she did. It just so happens that she liked it, since after she wrecked one of her competitors she got a kick out of it, so she says. She never gained much success, but she still enjoyed it. Over the course of the next six years, she only won three street stock races. Her father bought her a Dash Cup car in 1998, and she raced in the series' inaugural season of 1999.

1999-2010: "Europe's Finest"?[edit | edit source]

Logan started in the opening race at Monaco, where to her surprise, she was rather slow. However, after asking her father to invest in a better engine, she soon improved – not by much, but improve she did. She finished 10th in the race after fourteen of the nineteen drivers entered crashed out of the race. However, Verity was not one of these – she finished eight laps down. Her reason for this was that "she has not driven a car with such camber that it went quick." Needless to say, she did not really know what she was talking about. She finished 18th in points after earning only one top-five out of seven races at Toddring. This was after a 17 car accident happened, and Verity was behind it. After this, she claimed she was Europe's Finest, since she was the only person behind the incident to miss it, even though many claim this was because of her pace (or lack thereof).

2000 and 2001 were a slight improvement, as Logan started to grow a profession at Norisring, after she qualified, and finished, second there both years. However, this was her only good track, and she still never had any success elsewhere. She finished 13th in points in 2000, and 12th in 2001, respectably.

However, Verity missed the first half of the 2002 season, due to the fact that Dash Cup removed Norisring, her best track, from the schedule. Many of her competitors thought that she was acting "stuck-up" due to this, and thus, she ran from Toddring onwards, earning her 25th in points. 2004 and 2005 were not strong years for her, as she finished 26th in points both years, which was not particularly good seeing as she ran all the races, failing to score points in many of them. 2006 and 2007 seemed to be her peak though, as she gained top fives at tracks such as Rockingham, Croft, and the Birmingham Street Course over the course of those two years, gaining 6th in points in 2006, and 3rd in 2007; her best to date.

In 2008, she started to worsen slightly, but a 2nd place at Monaco put her in the top 10 in points after 2008. 2009 was a season to forget, after a string of accidents, mostly of her own doing (although she would argue to that), only scoring points in one race at Toddring (much like her rookie season). However this was only an 18th place finish, and she finished very low in the points, outside the top 30. 2010 was not much better, since in the return of Norisring, she crashed her car on the final lap after contact with Ben Atkins and Carla Rosinski while leading the event, causing all three to spin, and Logan to hit the wall hard, letting Dean Thompson through to take the win. Although many would claim she blocked over-aggressively on both, she claimed she held her line to this day. She still only finished one other race in a points paying position (since she still scraped a 15th place finish), and finished, again, outside the top 30 in points.

2011-2012: The Atlantic/MRD era[edit | edit source]

Logan had connections with Atlantic Motorsports throughout the 2010 season, as the team, even with their quick pace, claimed to have financial issues. With only Atkins's car sponsored at the time, they had two cars more with no sponsorship. Verity Logan had Vodafone sponsorship, though, since her dad had huge connections with the company. In 2011, it was announced that Atlantic had signed a deal to get sponsorship from none other than: Vodafone. For the 2011 season, it was rumored that Atlantic had signed Logan to the No. 28 car full time, but when Atkins heard the news that Carla Rosinski had fully recovered in time for the 2011 season, she was put in the car instead full time, leaving Logan in a part-time car.

The 2011 season was never run, but her situation carried over to 2012, with Logan still in a part-time ride, for the first five races, Streets of Japan, Toddring and New York. She qualified 5th for Eurospeedway, but a crash late in the race seen her finish 26th in the race. Norisring was a testament to her good qualifying streak though, as she got her first ever pole, running the only 1:00 lap in the field, but a bad start and a lack of real race pace led to a respectable 6th place finish.

Arguments between Logan and her owner Ben Atkins started to appear in the media, when Atkins called Logan a "rolling debris caution" after Eurospeedway, and Logan threatened to leave the team. However, this was quickly settled after Atkins feared a loss of sponsorship. Logan's good qualifying streak came to an end after a 24th place start at Rockingham, and a bad race occurred for her, emotionally and literally on track. An 18th place finish place was worsened by the loss of two competitors, Shawn Glenhooke and team-mate Ben Tremblay. An early crash at Brands Hatch seen a mediocre 14th place start turned into a terrible 24th place finish. The last if her races before Japan was the race at Oulton Park, which seen Verity start 6th, and finish 6th in a quiet, but good run.

Rumours started to populate the garages that Verity Logan would lose both her Streets of Japan and New York dates on the calendar to Harriet Wallace, but Atkins denied this. He said the reason Verity would stay is because she is a "vital part to the team." This could refer to her links with the sponsorship, however.

Despite that, she was released from her car in May, and fears that Vodafone would leave Atlantic Motorsports with her proved to be unfounded. Logan was not out of a ride long, as she was signed to run with MRD Motorsports after Tom Delgado scouted her for the No. 77 car, which was previously run by Carlo De Pretto, who moved onto ARLA competition.

Her first race for MRD Motorsports would start off well, as she earned her 2nd career pole (and her 2nd of the season) at Monaco. Unlike Norisring, Verity kept the lead after lap 1, and she lead the entire race, and won the race for the first time in 13 years. Her teammate Marco Cardillo finished in the back in race 1 in contrast. Ben Atkins says that he made a mistake in firing her, and realised that after her excellent drive at Monaco, and he even said on twitter that "Tom Delgado may have picked up someone good." Verity Logan attempted to make her ARLA debut at the 2012 Mini Indy 500 with MRD Motorsports, but never found her feet in the car, and failed to qualify, while her teammates had no trouble doing so.

Despite this seemingly poor performance, MRD still announced that Verity was going full time in Dash Cup due to good performance in the #77, despite her win at Monaco being her only performance under the MRD label.

2012 Results[edit | edit source]

Race No. Round Track Position
1 Eurospeedway GP Eurospeedway Lausitz 26th
2 Norisring GP Norisring 6th
3 Rockingham GP Rockingham Motor Speedway 18th
4 Brands Hatch GP Brands Hatch 24th
5 Oulton GP Oulton Park 6th
6 Grand Prix of Monaco Race 2 Circuit de Monaco 1st
7 Japanese GP Osaka Street Circuit 2nd
8 Motegi GP Twin Ring Motegi 26th
9 Spa GP Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps 12th
10 Karjala GP Karjala Raceway 26th
11 Toddring GP Toddring 23rd
12 Illinois GP Carbondale Raceway 8th

Personal life[edit | edit source]

Verity's birth name is Stephanie, however, she hates that name with a passion after hearing another woman in a supermarket yell the name "Stephanie" in a way she heavily disapproved of. She prefers to be called by Verity, since Verity was her favourite character in a play called "Find Me". She is known to have an odd obsession about fellow driver and ex-teammate Daniel Miller even though Miller has stated various times that he does not have any interest in her.

Dust-up with Trey Ashby[edit | edit source]

After her failure to qualify for the 2012 Mini-Indy 500, she lamented on her Twitter feed, "First time in one of these cars, and I... really wasn't quick. Oh well, there will be more chances in the future." ARLA part-time driver Trey Ashby responded to her saying, "What? Ok, I'll be honest, next time you come in, try to be faster than Doom-O or dudding". The comment sparked an argument between the two that spilled over to the duo's appearance on the television program ARLA News Now! The argument fizzled out soon after that, however.