BRISTOL, Tenn: Joey Logano was denied an opportunity to sweep the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway Dirt Track weekend after being involved in numerous incidents in Sunday night’s Food City Dirt Race.
After dominating and winning Saturday night’s NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race at the temporary 0.533-mile dirt oval, Logano finished last in 37th and suffering his worst finish of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Starting 12th, Logano was able to maintain his presence inside the top-15, but when Bubba Wallace spun his No. 23 Dr. Pepper Toyota Camry off Turn 2 at Lap 11, Logano spun trying to avoid Wallace and slammed into the water barriers at the entrance of the backstretch pit road.
Thankfully, Logano was able to continue and remain on the lead lap.
During his march back towards the front, the Team Penske driver was able to gain several spots and had brilliantly climbed back inside the top-25 until he got tangled with a spinning Brad Keselowski.
Again having to rally himself from back of the grid, Logano’s charge would be stalled with more contact on the race track. The contact cut down the right front tire on the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang which sent the reining Cup Series champion to pit road under green flag conditions.
While under the attention of his No. 22 Team Penske team, Logano’s issues became more severe as they discovered that the suspension had been damage during the on-track contact sending them to the garage and out of the race after 96 laps completed.
A frustrated Logano said he had a good race car but felt like he was caught up in a lot of incidents from the biggening of the race.
“Someone wrecked in front of me and I can’t say I really saw it and they came down the racetrack and hit it with the right-front and it broke the steering and then I hit the wall really hard after that,” said Logano of the incident that resulted in his second DNF of 2023.
“That just kind of killed our car. It’s a bummer. We got caught up in pretty much everything from the beginning of the race. I was in the first couple of cautions right off the bat. We had a really good Mustang that could run its way back through the field and we got our way back to 14th by the end of the first stage and I was like, ‘Alright, I think we’re pretty good.’ And then just got caught up in more of them.”
Logano added that even though it wasn’t necessarily difficult to come through the field because of the number of lanes available to race, his momentum was stalled for lack of race rhythm.
“There is no rhythm right now,” offered Logano after being evaluated and released from the infield care center. “They run 10 laps at a time if that. It’ll probably look like that for a while.
“Our car was so good that we drove from the back a few times and it wasn’t that bad. There are a lot of lanes. If you’re faster, you can move around and do different things. You can pass and make big moves and do things, but there’s always carnage around you and at some point you get caught up in it.”
The 32-time Cup Series winner said from his view, the race was pretty entertaining despite the cars being on edge.
“There’s a lot of lanes,” sounded Logano. “It’s really slick and as the cars get more and more sideways they don’t really like it too much. They really want to come around easy and you just see cars spin out, which is just a product of not being dirt cars. I think that’s part of it, but when we do get to race it’s pretty entertaining.”
Heading to Martinsville, Logano sits eighth in the championship standings, 58 points behind new series leader Christopher Bell.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01 or email at: [email protected].
