TreatMyClot.com 300 at Auto Club Speedway (2-mile speedway, Fontana, Calif.)

The No. 22 America’s Tire Ford Mustang

Saturday, March 22, 2014

• Joey Logano, making his first NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) start of the season, qualified fourth for Saturday afternoon’s event at Auto Club Speedway behind the wheel of the No. 22 America’s Tire Ford Mustang.
• It took just six laps for Logano to make his way to the front of the field, a place he would become accustomed to all afternoon long.
• During the first round of green-flag pit stops on lap 41, the No. 22 team had a slow stop, handing over the top spot to the No. 54 of Kyle Busch. However, the speed of the America’s Tire Ford prevailed and Logano was able to cut a three-second lead down to nothing, taking the lead once again on lap 61.
• Throughout the middle portion of the race, Logano would show the strength of the Team Penske machine, leading lap after lap despite battles with Busch and the charging Kyle Larson.
• With a car that was a little loose, crew chief Jeremy Bullins continued to make minor adjustments to the Ford Mustang as the race went on. Depsite the changes, the car continued to become more and more of a handful.
• While in the lead with less than 20 laps to go, the entire field came down pit road for their final round of pit stops. A slow stop dropped Logano from the lead to third for the final restart.
• Over the final 15 laps, Logano radioed in that the America’s Tire Mustang was way too tight. Logano dropped to fourth and was charging back towards the front , but fell just short as the checkers waved, coming home fourth.
• Logano led the race on six separate occasions for a total of 96 laps.
• The No. 22 Team Penske Mustang continues to sit second in the NNS Owners’’ Championship, seven points behind the No. 54 of Joe Gibbs Racing.

IT LOOKED LIKE YOU HAD THE BEST CAR OUT THERE TODAY. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END?

“We just over-adjusted a little bit at the end of the race. The run before that last one, Kyle Larson caught me pretty quick and I was pretty free, so we tightened it up quite a bit and restarted third but it was just too tight. I was just outside all the fun. It looked like a heck of a race in front of me. I had an unbelievable view. Man, I wanted to get up in the middle of that and just couldn’t quite get there. When they would lose their momentum, I would get a little closer and I would just get tighter and I couldn’t quite get there. It is frustrating. Overall this America’s Tire Ford Mustang was fast today and we led most of the laps so you can’t be too mad but I want to be in victory lane.”