For the first time since the season finale last November at Phoenix Raceway, defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano was able to climb from his Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse and see his name displayed among the top-10 finishers.
Logano finished Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway in eighth position, after charging back through the pack over the course of the race’s final green-flag run of 75 laps. The comeback was only necessary because of a late-race spin that happened due to contact from Chase Briscoe.
However, the native of Middletown, Connecticut, doesn’t blame Briscoe for the late-race incident as much as he blames Ross Chastain, who, Logano says on multiple occasions throughout Sunday’s event, raced the No. 22 overaggressively.
The incident itself only happened because Chastain, known for his aggressive driving, made a major block on Briscoe entering the third corner, which ruined the No. 19’s angle into the corner, causing him to slide up into the side of Logano.
“The long haul was pretty good, so I could kind of like pick them off one at a time, kind of thing, and then Ross [Chastain] just sticking it in a tight spot, he did it to me the restart before and you know, I can’t even blame Briscoe for shipping him, I think he got himself in a bind trying to ship him.”
“He [Ross Chastain] just races like a jackass every week and I keep paying the price, and I’m sick of paying the price,” Logano added.
When asked if the three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion had anything to say to Chastain about the way he was being raced, Logano chuckled and said, “Not at the moment, not anything good. That’s twice in the last three weeks, though, that’s the deal.”
But, in spite of that late-race spin, Logano was able to march through the field (again) to secure that top-10 finish, something that despire being in a decent spot in the point standings – and being one of the drivers to lead the most laps in the NASCAR Cup Series – had eluded him through the first six events of the season.
“Yeah, I mean at least we finally got a top-10 on the year, I mean I’m sick of hearing all of those things, so at least we got a top-10, but it’s still a little bittersweet, you know, just because – you never know, right, but if we were able to have a couple of good restarts, or pit stops were good today, we were doing a good job on pit road, maybe we could have gotten up there and mixed it up with them.”
“Just had to recover, again. Another race where we had to recover.”
After Martinsville, Logano sits ninth in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings, 60 markers behind William Byron, who leads the regular-season championship. The No. 22 team will look to score another top-10, or maybe even better, when the series heads to Darlington Raceway next weekend for Throwback Weekend.
