RELATED: Busch, Logano mix it up on pit road
In what can only be described as a bout of fortuitous timing, Team Penske driver Joey Logano appeared on FS1’s NASCAR RaceHub on Tuesday, two days after an eventful Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
After a third straight top-six finish to open the season in the Kobalt 400 as part of the resurgence for Ford and Team Penske (teammate Brad Keselowski nearly won his second straight before a late-race parts failure), Logano addressed the heated confrontation with Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch on pit road following the race.
“At that point, I was trying to calm everything down and tell him, ‘Hey, I got loose underneath you and my bad’ and it didn’t seem like he wanted to talk much at the time,” Logano said. “At this point, I realized that and, so, not the way I don’t think any of us really wanted that to end.”
Following contact on the final lap while both were running in the top five, Logano’s No. 22 Ford made contact with Busch’s No. 18 Toyota, sending the 2015 champion spinning across the start/finish line to a 22nd-place finish.
Busch then hastily walked up to Logano on pit road and threw a punch before being tackled and eventually separated by NASCAR officials.
Logano said he had called Busch on Tuesday to have a discussion.
“We’ve spoken. Obviously we didn’t speak much there, so I got a chance to call him up earlier today to be able to talk to him a little bit and at least tell my side of the story,” Logano said. “We’re going to have two sides to the story like there is all the time, but really the bottom line is we’re two passionate race car drivers. We’re two of the best in the sport that are going to go for wins that are aggressive and we collided.
“That’s the part that’s tough, because it’s going to happen. You want to get through it as quick as you can and talk it out, but bottom line is it wasn’t intentional and we’re going to have to work through it somehow. We’ve been racing against each other for nine years. We’ve never had a problem. We’ve been teammates and we’ve known each other really well. I consider him a friend of mine.
“In the heat of the moment, when there’s 40 drivers out there with one goal … to go win the race, right? Eventully tempers are going to fly.”
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Logano now heads to a track in Phoenix Raceway that could see him continue his hot start. The Team Penske driver is the track’s most recent winner; his fall desert victory propelled him to the Championship 4 last November.
The Team Penske driver has just one finish outside the top 10 in the past seven visits to Phoenix.