Joey Logano – NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Michigan Race Report

Print Middletown’s Joey Logano qualified the Team Penske No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion in the ninth position for Sunday’s Quicken Loans 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

“I feel like that was hard-fought,” said Logano. “We barely made the first round and barely made the second round and the third round I thought we had a good lap, but the track just cooled off and everyone else went faster too.

“From where we started in the first round I didn’t think we were gonna be very good, so we recovered decent and I think we learned some things throughout qualifying. Some of our changes were really good, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

Much like Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Michigan, Logano proved to be very fast in the early portion of the event, making his way up to third by lap 14. Once he entered the top five, he continued to run among the leaders for the remainder of the afternoon.

Track position and running in clean air proved to be important as it typically is at high-speed, high-downforce tracks like Michigan. When running by himself, Logano said the Shell-Pennzoil Ford ran well, but a little loose entering the corners and tight in the center of the turns. In traffic though, the handling of the car changed dramatically, making it tough for crew chief Todd Gordon and the team to make the proper adjustments to help the car’s performance.

Logano took the race lead off of a restart on lap 78. It would mark the first of two occasions that he led Sunday’s race.

Just past the halfway point, Logano found himself in the 12th position following a four-tire pit stop. In dirty air, it took Logano several laps to make his way back to the front. However, another solid restart on lap 127 allowed Logano to take the lead once again. He led for a total of 29 laps on the day.

Varying pit strategies began to unfold as the race wound down. With less than 20 laps to go, Logano had to make his final stop of the day, taking on two tires and a can of fuel. Unfortunately, other cars had already pitted and were able to get out of the pits in front of Logano.

At the finish Logano was able to take the checkered flag in the ninth position. In earning his eighth top-10 finish of the season, Logano jumped up two spots in the Sprint Cup Series standings to seventh place.

Q & A – Joey Logano
You had another good car, but it looks like strategy didn’t play out right for you this time?
“Going into today I didn’t think our car was gonna be very good, but Todd [Gordon] made some good changes overnight and made us more competitive. We seemed to have some good restarts all day, except for the last one, which is the most important one. We got the run we needed and then got loose and got stuck in the middle of three-wide and lost all the air in the car and lost my momentum so I went back a little bit. That’s the only time you’re able to pass someone, so you’ve got to be able to push really hard at those times and we weren’t able to capitalize after that. I think we fell back to maybe eighth or ninth and that’s where we rode the rest of the day.

“All the guys on this Shell/Pennzoil team did everything they were supposed to do. The strategy got a little mixed up at one point and then we didn’t get the best last restart and that’s what it is. If you put us out front, we can lead laps. If you put us second or third, we’d probably stay there. You place us 10th and we’d probably stay there, too. It’s really tough to pass.”