Can Asheville natives Nick Hensley and Coleman Pressley add Daytona win to last year's NASCAR title?
Joey Logano sat third behind Chase Briscoe and teammate Ryan Blaney on a restart with 33 laps to go at Phoenix International Raceway last November in NASCAR’s final race of the season.
He slowly picked off Briscoe and Blaney and made his way to the front. Logano retook the lead with 30 laps remaining and never looked back. He cruised to his fourth win of the year and his second NASCAR Cup Championship, beating Ross Chastain, Christopher Bell and Chase Elliot.
But it wasn’t just Logano. It was a team effort.
Two Asheville natives were on his pit crew who helped keep Logano out front most of the race and are back for more in 2023, which kicks off at Sunday's Daytona 500. Nick Hensley was his gas man while Coleman Pressley served as Logano’s spotter. It was Hensley’s second title (first with Logano) and Pressley’s first.
“It’s the ultimate goal,” Pressley said. “That’s what we want to do. No matter what sport you’re in, you want to be a champion, you want to be the best at it.”
Pressley said it was great seeing all the hard work they put in pay off.
Hensley's other title came with Brad Keselowski's team in 2012. He said he felt like they were going to win a lot more championships but that never came to fruition.
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“The second one is definitely more sobering than the first,” Hensley said. “Because you saw it, I remember when the checkered flag flew, everybody’s jumping off the wall. And me, I was sitting behind the wall for five minutes taking it in, not trying to rush anything.”
Hensley joined Logano’s team in 2020, while Pressley became his spotter in 2021.
Hensley wasn’t always a NASCAR pit crew member. He originally played baseball at Asheville High and collegiately at King University in Tennessee. After graduation, he started working for race teams as a mechanic. He joined NASCAR when a Craftsman Truck Series team asked him to be their jackman.
Team Penske offered him a job to be a mechanic, and he eventually became a gasman for its NASCAR Xfinity Series team and worked his way up to the Cup series.
Pressley, an Enka alumnus, is the son of former Cup series driver Robert Pressley and the grandson of former Western North Carolina short-track racer Bob Pressley.
Pressley started off as a driver, winning the UARA Stars Late Model Series Championship in 2010, and made 12 Xfinity series starts before making the transition to spotter in 2015. Before his current role, he spotted for Keselowski and A.J. Allmendinger.
“I’ll never be able to become a top-level NASCAR driver,” Pressley said. “So my goal was to become a top-level spotter.”
Now that Hensley and Pressley have become Cup Series champions, they are hoping to cross off another NASCAR bucket-list item: Winning the Daytona 500.
Hensley said that, between his time with Keselowski and Logano, his car has led at the white flag seven times but never won the race.
Pressley said that victory is the ultimate goal now.
“It’s definitely number one on my list,” Pressley said. “Like a championship was obviously No. 1, but 1B has always been the Daytona 500.”
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville's Nick Hensley, Coleman Pressley back with Logano NASCAR team
