Logano Finishes 12th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
March 11, 2013
THE RACE
The Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile oval, Las Vegas, NV)
THE RESULTS
Starting Position: 21
Finishing Position: 12
Status: Running
Current Championship Position: 15
THE RACE REVIEW
· As a result of the qualifying rain out on Friday, Joey Logano and the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil team had to start Sunday’s race from the 21st position based off of last year’s point standings.
· Early on, Logano radioed that the car was solid when in clean air. However, things took a turn for the worse when Logano was caught speeding on pit road during the first round of green flag stops. The subsequent penalty dropped Logano two laps down to the leaders.
· The rest of the afternoon, Logano found himself off pit sequence with the rest of the field. He ran as high as 15th on the lead lap and as low as 30th, two laps down.
· Finally, Logano started getting the breaks he was looking for, catching a timely caution to put him just one lap down. Then, with a fast Ford Fusion that was running lap times quicker than the race leaders, Logano raced his way into the “lucky dog” spot as he was able to get back on the lead lap with less than 40 laps remaining.
· Logano impressively drove from 17th to 12th over the final few laps of the race. The finish lifted Logano from 21st to 15th in the Cup Series driver point standings.
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
“The guys did a good job though giving me what I needed - a really good race car today. I screwed up and sped down pit road on the first stop. I went down a lap and tried the wave around but never caught our break. I felt like we had a top-five car but I just made a mistake. Too many mistakes on both sides right now. The car was great but I made a dumb mistake. I never really had an opportunity to recover (like) we wanted to.” - Joey Logano on his pit road penalty.
"It's frustrating because we've had three good cars and just haven't gotten the breaks. To get the finishes we need. I felt like today, we had a car that could run with the front guys. We were running lap times faster than the leaders. It's tough when the breaks don't go your way, but it happens. We have had three races and three really fast cars. We’ll put it all together and we will win some races." - Logano on the start to his season.