Following an issue on pit road that saw him leave his pit stall with the gas can still attached, Joey Logano would fight back during the second half of the race, including getting a lucky dog, to post a sixth place finish.
“We really kept our cool throughout the day. I think that was important,” Logano noted. “We were able to get the lucky dog, then had some damage avoiding the 18’s crash, was able to fix that and recover again to get ourselves back in.
“Definitely a drama-filled day for sure, not what we wanted. We were hoping for just a normal, uneventful day to just get a nice top 10 is all we needed, which we ended up doing, but it was definitely eventful along the way.”
While the day may not have been write-home worthy, it was enough as Logano will be one of the four drivers fighting for the championship this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Logano noted post-race at Phoenix that it’s days like these that drivers reflect on and realize making the most out of the situation is what helped him get closer to winning the championship.
“It may not win the championship next weekend, but it gets you to that point. The last couple weeks we had a couple days that we had to be like that, and we were able to recover and get something decent out of it,” he noted. “But just like in the past, you try to minimize the damage, and to do that, that’s very hard. It’s something that I know for years I wasn’t good at and was able to kind of learn and figure it out, slowly but surely, and you’ve got to have a team behind you that can do that, too. It’s not just the driver rallying back. That’s everyone keeping their heads together and not imploding from the inside.”
Logano added that continuing to make the most out of their situation is what got them to that point, so why would they do something else?
“Todd said to me, he goes, you know, don’t reinvent the wheel at this point, you just polish the wheel a little bit and just become a little better in every area,” he continued. “That’s what we’ve been able to do throughout the last couple years since we started working together and it’s paying off. It’s been a fun ride so far.”
Continuing to ride the wave and do what they’re doing, Joey Logano now has the chance to become a Sprint Cup Series Champion for the first time.
I’m a Joey fan, as my fan fiction site name indicates, so I’m happy he has a shot at championship. He’s been strong at the mile and halfs and his Homestead finish last year was his best. Given his career year, don’t count him out.