WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – One of the pre-race favorites for Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen only completed just 1 lap at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International after Joey Logano found himself in trouble in the inner loop and damaging the radiator on his No. 22 Team Penske Ford Fusion.
Logano and Kyle Larson were battling for a spot comfortably inside the top-10 when the two cars made contact in Turn 5 and Logano went off course Turn 6. The contact from the bumper bar of Larson’s Chevrolet punctured the radiator which Logano noticed after he plowed through the gravel trap.
Once on pit road to survey the damage, crew chief Todd Gordon immediately radioed to take the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford to the garage not realizing that NASCAR had placed the team under the damaged vehicle policy.
While in the garage, Gordon and Logano were informed that they were done for the day with Gordon trying to advocate it was a mechanical issue that sent them to the garage.
NASCAR didn’t budge and Logano will be credited with a 37th place finish.
Introduced this year at Daytona, the damaged vehicle policy states that once a competitor involved in an accident goes to the garage – they are out of the race.
“I don’t really know what happened in the garage on how the whole repair situation repair is. I don’t know,” said Logano. “It’s somewhat confusing, I think, to all of us to try to understand exactly how that works, so I don’t really know what happened there.”
Logano admitted that while the action was fierce in the opening laps, he was having fun.
“But on the race track, we were actually racing the heck out of each other at the start of the race. It was fun. I was trying to keep the nose on the car and was gonna try to make a run on Larson off the carousel and I was right on him when they checked up in front of him.
He lifted and there was nothing he was supposed to do. He checked up and I ran into the back of him and there’s just not enough bumper on the front of my car apparently and it just knocked the radiator out of it.”
Logano’s weekend in the Finger Lakes started strong with a win in Saturday’s Zippo 200. It was his 30th career win in the series.
“Went from hero to zero quick,” Logano quipped.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
