There was a moment with about five laps to go in the Ambetter Health 400 that Joey Logano thought ‘I screwed up’ with the most dominant car of the race.
Logano had led 139 laps of the 255 completed to that point and was able to drive it through the field anytime circumstances separated him from clean air. To that point, he had done it again on the final run and had pulled himself side-by-side with leader Brad Keselowski but couldn’t bring himself to clear his former teammate.
That would have meant hanging his current Penske teammates out to dry moments after they pushed him to the lead.
“Stayed committed to the bottom because my teammates were down there,” Logano said.
There was not going to be a scenario where Logano was going to win that race having intentionally abandoned Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric.
As a result, the bottom line Logano led had fallen back to even with third-on-the-outside running Christopher Bell. That meant, at any time, Tyler Reddick in second could have dropped down to the bottom to get a push from the most dominant car of the race, a fact Logano was keenly aware of.
“I thought I messed up because there with three, four laps to go, the outside lane got like four cars cleared,” Logano said. “I thought ‘oh, man, too far back,’ (and) one of them is going to pull down in front of me. Now I’m not the leader of the lane.
“And then it all changed.”
And boy did it change quickly too.
Reddick made his move coming to the white flag, dipping to the bottom, but losing second to Christopher Bell. Too soon. Corey Lajoie got a big run on Logano and pushed the Penske 22 down the frontstretch, the defending champion carried the momentum to the outside and even with Keselowski, the 2012 champion realizing that was the moment the race was lost.
“Joey got such a huge run down the frontstretch and there was nothing I could do to stop it other than wreck all of us,” Keselowski said. “That wasn’t going to do us any favors.”
No, especially not potentially wrecking all the car from the organization that lent him a vast majority of his Cup Series success and riches, and another driver he really admires in Corey Lajoie.
But ultimately, Logano was just not going to be denied with a set-up that was obviously the class of the field, a result that was important given the disadvantages Ford has to the rest of the field early this season.
They have not been particularly strong on the…
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