Joey Logano’s aggressive driving in the closing laps of the 67th Daytona 500 drew sharp criticism from fellow competitors Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon, despite Logano’s impressive rally from a lap down to nearly win the race.
On Lap 186 of a scheduled 200, Logano swung from the outside line to the middle in an attempt to reach third by squeezing Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Ryan Blaney. However, Stenhouse blocked the move, and Logano’s tap on Stenhouse’s left rear triggered an eight-car crash on the backstretch.
Among the victims was Kyle Busch, who had been running fifth in pursuit of a breakthrough Daytona 500 win in his 20th attempt. The Richard Childress Racing driver, whose No. 8 Chevrolet finished 34th, didn’t mince words when discussing Logano’s role in the incident.
“Looks like the fastest car got in a hurry to get to the wreck,” Busch said. “Logano was by far the fastest car today. Saw a lot of laps led. And he could about do anything. The Penske cars were very strong. We still got (15) laps to go, and he’s trying to go through the middle and make a hole that isn’t there and just created chaos. I hate it for all of our guys. We had a fast car, and we were in position and just kind of biding our time. You’ve got to know how wide your race car is to be able to find a hole that it’ll fit in, and he obviously doesn’t know that.”
The criticism of Logano continued two hours later during the winner’s news conference, where three-time Daytona 500 winner Jeff Gordon, the vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, took an unprompted shot at the three-time Cup champion when race winner William Byron was asked if “people made dumb moves.”
“Joey did,” Gordon responded, prompting a chuckle from Byron, who agreed, saying, “Yeah, that’s fair.”
Logano, whose No. 22 Ford led three times for 43 laps, felt urgency to move into position behind the first-place car of Penske teammate Austin Cindric, who led a race-high 59 laps.
“I had to get to the second car in line to have a chance to win the thing,” Logano explained. “I am checking up, but at that point, the checkup has already happened behind me. Everybody is all over each other, and I was getting shoved into it. I can’t get out of it, and then we made contact. It is unfortunate.”
Stenhouse, interviewed by Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass before having seen a replay, tempered his view of Logano’s move, saying, “I feel like the holes were pretty small he was trying to fill. I got a couple of late blocks on him as we were making our runs up through there, and I was hoping he would stick with me, him and LaJoie. We were getting ready to drive to first, second and third with still 10 to go. I’d have to go back and watch. I feel like maybe he was trying to fill the gap and then him and somebody else got together and hit me in the left rear.”
Despite the setback, Logano could take some solace in an impressive rebound from debris in his car’s throttle body that caused his engine to begin lagging on the Stage 2 restart. He lost a lap for multiple pit stops as his team tried to diagnose the issue but zoomed from 35th to eighth at the end of Stage 2.
“Something to get out of the day and take a positive out of it,” Logano said of his Stage 1 victory. “Had a fast car. Just wasn’t able to get it done this year.”
