No. 22 car finishes fourth after starting from the rear
RELATED: Full race results | Updated series standings
LONG POND, Pa. — Joey Logano likened his fourth-place finish Sunday at Pocono Raceway to one of those “blue-collar days.” After helping his Team Penske No. 22 Ford team grind out a top-five from unlikely odds, Logano was still smiling post-race on pit road at the workmanlike effort.
Logano started at the back of the 43-car field in the Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 after a Sunday morning rear-gearing change, then recovered from a pit-road speeding penalty on his first stop to claim his seventh top-five finish in 14 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races this year. At the heart of it was a solid game plan from crew chief Todd Gordon, who shouldered the blame for the penalty but made amends with his pit strategy.
“Everyone did a good job,” Logano said. “We weren’t fast all weekend, so we fought hard and tried to use some strategy early. With the speeding penalty, I lost some there and then tried to keep moving up and got something decent out of it.”
After starting in the rear of the field, Logano quickly moved forward, gaining 15 positions in the first 10 laps. He’d picked off three more places by the time he reached his first scheduled pit stop, where Gordon called him in early on Lap 22.
Logano was among the first to come down pit road, attempting to make the 400-miler a three-stop race from that point. In doing so, the team employed a strategy similar to those at road courses, where green-flag stops are less of a hindrance.
“This place lends itself to being a little creative,” Gordon said. “Pit road’s fairly short compared to the track length, so pitting under green doesn’t cost you a lap. Obviously starting in the back with a gear change made it a little anxious and (we) had to create something.”
But Gordon — driven to gain more ground early — also directed Logano to push the limits on the pit-road timing loops, netting the No. 22 entry a pass-through penalty for speeding.
“I told him we could go to a point that he couldn’t. I’ll own that one,” Gordon said. “Just trying to figure out what we could do for later and figured we’d take the lump early if it was an issue, and it was. Overall, a good recovery.”
The recovery effort was aided by Logano’s ability to pick off spots during a handful of restarts in the race’s second half, pushing him to as high as second place in the running order with 20 laps remaining. That stretch also included a brush with the Turn 3 wall, a glancing scrape with 26 laps left that didn’t dramatically affect his progress.
But his post-race lament was one shared by several teams — the inability to keep pace with dominating race winner Martin Truex Jr. and runner-up Kevin Harvick.
“We weren’t fast from when we unloaded here on Friday and we worked it into a top-five piece,” Logano said. “I’m proud of that. I felt like we might’ve had a third-place car at the end of the race possibly, but we just had nothing for the 4 (Harvick) and 78 (Truex). They’ve been so fast here the last couple of weeks, so we’ve got our work cut out to figure out how to beat those guys.”
The next site for that assignment comes Sunday at Michigan International Speedway, where Logano and Co. have enjoyed a measure of recent success. Since joining Team Penske two seasons ago, Logano has led at least 20 laps in each of his efforts at the 2-mile track, scoring a victory from the Coors Light Pole in August 2013.
After converting a major Pocono rally, Gordon said there’s something to the notion of Michigan momentum, but there’s also the confidence that comes with making strides with the 2015 rules package.
“This sport’s all about the psychology of it and how you do, but it’s good to get back to us making our race car better all day and we made our runs better all day,” Gordon said. “That’s something that we did very well last year, and with this new package and this new track bar adjuster, it’s something that we’ve had to kind of work at trying to figure out how to handle that, and we’re getting better at it.”