News

Track:  Bristol Motor Speedway

Race:   Drive to Stop Diabetes 300

Date:   April 18, 2015

No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang – Joey Logano

Start:  2nd

Finish: 1st (23rd-career NASCAR XFINITY Series win)

Status: Running

Laps Completed:  300/300

Laps Led:  300

Owners’ Points Position:  1^st (+20)

Recap:  Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang, led every lap en route to his 23^rd-career NASCAR XFINITY Series victory on Saturday afternoon at Bristol Motor Speedway.   Logano just missed earning his fifth-straight XFINITY Series pole and started second in Saturday’s 300-lap event.  As the green flag flew, Logano got the jump on the inside lane and grabbed the lead coming out of turn two.  Logano would lead through the early portion of the event, showing the speed of the Discount Tire Mustang in lapped traffic.  At one point, Logano would open a nearly five second lead over the rest of the field.  Several caution flags slowed the event and the Discount Tire team got Logano and the Mustang out of the pits first every time.  Through pit strategy, the 24-year-old would find himself having to run the final 120 laps on a single set of tires.  Despite the lack of fresh rubber, Logano was able to show mastery through lapped traffic and pull away from the field once again to take the checkered flag, his second NASCAR XFINITY Series win of the season and his second-career win at Bristol.  Logano set a record by leading the most laps in a single race in NXS history and became the first driver to lead every lap in a NXS race at the half mile track.  With the win, the No. 22 team extended its lead in the NXS Owners’ point standings to 20 over the No. 88 of JR Motorsports.

Quote:  “It’s not often you get a car that is that good.  In practice, I thought that we were OK and last night we were talking about it and he’s (crew chief Greg Erwin) like, ‘What do you think?  How do we stack up?’  And I was like, ‘Ahhh, I think we’re just OK.  I don’t think we’re great.’  I felt like if everything went right, we’d have a shot at winning the race, but I did not think we were going to have a car like this.  Overnight adjustments made it a lot better and maybe I was just asking for the world, but apparently it worked out.  It’s not very often you get a car that is that fast.  When you have a Discount Tire Ford Mustang like that the whole race, you’re just hoping that something doesn’t go wrong and you’re looking for the checkered flag because it’s pretty neat to say you’ve led every single lap.  That’s actually a pretty neat little thing.  I’ve never done that before in my career and I don’t think in any kind of race cars, so that’s pretty cool to do today.”