RICHMOND, Va. – Joey Logano gave it a gallant effort Saturday night at Richmond Raceway, but the Team Penske driver’s second-place finish in the Federated Auto Parts 400 wasn’t good enough to earn him a placement in the post-season playoffs.
Logano started the final race of the regular season in 12th but steadily made progress with his No. 22 American Red Cross Ford moving into sixth by the end of Stage 1 and by the end of Stage 2 he had worked himself to fourth.
During the final stage of the race, Logano’s car hovered inside the top-10 and seemed completely out of contention for his second win of the season, but then a caution waved with three laps to go, stacking the field one more time.
When chaos ensued on the NASCAR overtime restart, Logano restarted ninth but fought through his competition playing bumper cars with each other to shoot the gap and find himself back inside the top-five on the white flag lap.
Contact between Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin entering Turn 1 on the last lap allowed Logano to slip by on the low side, but the caution had already been called and the race was over.
And Logano can’t finish any higher than 17th in the championship standings this season.
Last November, he finished second to champion seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson.
“Came up a little bit short overall,” said Logano. “Yeah, it stings a little bit. Last time we were sitting here after a race, it was after a win, and this time it’s after a second, which
overall if you look at our Richmond overall for a season with the two races, you’d say, that’s pretty good, a first and a second.
“But just overall, obviously it stings to come up one spot short and not be able to get into the playoffs. It is what it is. It’s reality, and we will move on.”
Taking an all-or-nothing Homestead like approach for Friday night’s regular season finale nearly paid off for Logano and his team. But even through the disappointment, he was proud of his team’s efforts.
“It is what it is. Like I said, we were close. I said before the race, second is a failure, and we finished second. Go figure. But overall, I’m proud of our race team, proud of the way we handled the pressure this week. I said before the race started that this is kind of like Homestead last year for us.
“It’s just come a little bit early, so we knew how to handle these situations, and we executed as good as we knew how to, just wasn’t fast enough to make it happen when we needed to.”
Even though Logano won’t be able contend for the championship, the 18-time Cup winner says his team isn’t prepared to roll over.
This is the test of our character, not only as a driver but as a team and the way we handle these next 10 races,” said Logano. “We don’t want to roll over. We want to help our teammates try to win a championship, and ultimately, we want to win 10 races. That’s what the goal is at this point.
“It may be the end of our championship run this year, but it’s not the end of our season. There’s still a lot of races and a lot of stats we can rack up to make up for what still hurts right now.”
Moving forward, Logano said his season will still be considered disappointing, but was quickly reminded how humbling this sport can be.
Yeah, for that last 10 races, yeah, we’ll be happy with that and we’ll still celebrate victories, but the ultimate goal when we go down to Daytona every year for the first race is win the championship,” he said. “That’s all we talk about. We came up one spot short last year, and this year we came up one spot short just being in it.
“Yeah, it’s a humbling sport. It’s just how it is sometimes. We put ourselves in this position, and we’ll live with it, and we’ll fight hard to come back.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
