It's often said that sports are always better spectated in person, and that saying rings especially true for NASCAR. When you're in the bleachers and the starter waves that green flag, there's no useless television chatter, no clown voice shouting "boogity boogity boogity!" There is nothing at all except the earth-shattering wail of forty-three pushrod V8s rapidly depleting the crude oil supply of planet Earth while building momentum like a freight train towards what seems like certain apocalypse in the first corner. The energy of the cars is so much more violent, the racing so much faster than you'd ever imagined, and you're reminded that even with all the modern safety in NASCAR, motor racing is still a damn dangerous thing to do. It's fantastic.

Watching this from the stands is great, and made greater because you can drink beer and pour it on your bare chest. But experiencing the same race from the pit box of one of the teams battling for the win, now that's tapping into the excitement mainline. This is a team sport, after all, and there is a ton of sweat and effort poured into each race weekend by driver and crew that goes largely unnoticed by the casual fan in the grandstands.

For this installment of Dark Room, I'm going to bring you with me behind the pit wall as I try to keep up with Joey Logano, one of the consistently fastest NASCAR drivers on the track, and a strong favorite for the Sprint Cup championship in 2015. He and the whole #22 Penske team were kind enough to let me tag along to photograph what goes into making a serious run at a win during the Windows 10 400 at Pocono earlier this month. Joey and his team dominated that race all day long and it was a true nail-biter until the very end. Here's what I saw.