After Joey Logano suffered an engine failure in the Chase opener at Chicagoland Speedway, most analysts wrote off his championship chances.
Since then, the 22-year-old Joe Gibbs Racing driver has been doing everything with his power to prove them wrong. In Sunday’s race at Kansas Speedway, Logano qualified fifth and finished fourth, surviving a succession of frenetic restarts made necessary by a record 15 caution flags. Logano gained two positions to 10th in the standings after his second straight top five and now trails leader Matt Kenseth by 59 points with six races left.
“It was pretty crazy out there,” Logano said after the race. “Every restart, you had to be so aggressive to pass people, because that was your best shot to pass them–and everyone realized it. There wasn’t much grip out there, and everyone was doing that (being aggressive), and you are going to have a crash. We proved that fact multiple times today…
“I couldn’t imaging trying to call a race like this (from a crew chief’s perspective). It’s nuts, because one minute you’re first, and the next you’re 15th, and you hope you cycle out to the lead at the end.”
