DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.— Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano might have been sitting on a powder keg, but crew chief Todd Gordon wasn’t about to worry about it.
On Lap 161 in Sunday’s 57th running of the Great American Race, the engine in the No. 2 Team Penske Ford of Brad Keselowski exploded.
Fifteen laps later, Ryan Blaney’s engine did the same thing. Under the circumstances, Logano might have had misgivings about his own power plant, given that the failures had just taken a teammate and an affiliated car out of the race.
“I just asked Todd, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’” Logano said. “When he said there was nothing I could do, I stopped worrying about it.”
Gordon also took a pragmatic approach.
“You worry about the things you can control in this sport,” Gordon said. “At that point, we have no control over it. I think (engine builder) Doug Yates and his guys have done an awesome job of trying to bring as much power to the race track. We had had discussions prior to the race about where we could push it, where we couldn’t.
“Unfortunate with the 2 and the 21 (Blaney). But we had managed where we needed to be with our motor all day. You can’t worry about things you can’t control. At that point, as Joey said, it’s in the racing gods’ hands. Fortunately everything worked out for us.”
A further testament to the strength of Logano’s engine was his celebratory burnout.
“It held together ’cause I was trying to sling it right out the side of that thing, doing burn outs and laying it up,” Logano quipped. “But she held out. A lot stronger than you think. A pretty tough motor in that thing.”
Source: Reid Spencer / NASCAR Wire Service
