Despite troubles, Team Penske driver scores fifth-place finish
KANSAS CITY, Kan. – If Joey Logano hopes to contend for this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, the Team Penske driver and his No. 22 team will have to avoid the kind of mistakes that took them out of contention during Saturday night’s rain-delayed SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Speedway.
Logano passed more cars than any other driver at Kansas, 147 according to NASCAR loop data, and came home with a not-so-terrible fifth-place finish, his sixth top-five result in this year’s first 11 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races.
But missteps by the driver and team continually put the yellow Ford at the back of the field, requiring Logano to work his way through rush-hour-like traffic on at least two occasions.
"We inverted the field on ourselves," Logano said sheepishly. "We got most cars passed and it was fun, but … man, we did a terrible job. That’s pretty much what it comes down to."
The Daytona 500 winner joins the rest of the series this week at Charlotte Motor Speedway, site of Saturday night’s Sprint All-Star race (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, MRN, Sirius XM). A week later, Charlotte plays host to the Coca-Cola 600 (May 24, 6 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM), the series’ longest affair.
He has finished as high as second in the non-points race and his average finish in points races there is better than any other facility. But he has yet to win at the 1.5-mile track.
And unless they avoid problems such as those that surfaced at Kansas, he’ll remain winless at Charlotte.
Although he started on the pole for the fourth time this season last weekend, and led the first 29 laps of the 267-lap race, a penalty during pit stops on Lap 95 (his crew was over the wall too soon) dropped him to the tail end of the field.
After working his way from 32nd back inside the top 10, Logano was flagged again on Lap 186 when he came down pit road before it was open under caution. That miscue sent him back to the rear once more, this time just outside the top 15.
"I typically hear it on my radio, whether (pit road) is open or closed," he said of the mistake. "I heard the call to pit but I never looked (at the pit entrance lights). I saw no one else was pitting and thought ‘we’re going to get off strategy here. I’m the only guy (pitting).’"
Fortunately for the team, Logano’s car had speed. He was back inside the top 10 once again by Lap 220 and fifth by the time the checkered flag finally appeared.
"We got a top five out of it because we had a fast car and we were able to recover," he said. "But just on all aspects we all just did a terrible job; We know how to do it, we’ve done it before, we execute really well; we just kept screwing up."
Logano made it to the Championship Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup a year ago, winning a career-best five times in his second season with the Penske organization. Based on his team’s showing thus far this year, he’s once again considered one of the favorites to battle for the title.
As long as he and the team avoid putting themselves in the type of precarious positions they found themselves in last weekend.
"We had a fast race car and that’s what saved us," Logano said. "But our execution was not very good. We’ve got to raise our game a little bit. We’ve got to clean it up."
