Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 AAA Insurance Ford Fusion, overcame several miscues throughout the evening to earn his sixth top-five finish of the season, coming home fifth in the SpongeBob SquarePants 400 at Kansas Speedway in a race that ended early Sunday morning. Logano started from the pole, his fourth of the year and the 12th of his career, and led the first 29 laps of the event. Logano was a mainstay in the top-three until rains came just before the lap 100 mark, which halted action for over two hours. When the race finally resumed, Logano had to serve a penalty for a pit road violation, dropping him all the way back to 32nd. The speed of the No. 22 AAA Fusion showed over the next 30 laps, as Logano raced his way back into the top-10 and eventually back into the top-five. Another pit road miscue on lap 186 came when Logano pitted while pit road was still closed, dropping him back in the field again, this time to 22nd. Logano’s speed once again showed and the 24-year-old raced back to the top-10 in just 15 laps. Late in the race, Logano and crew chief Todd Gordon made a call for four tires during a caution with less than 10 laps to go. Over the final six laps, Logano raced from 12th up to fifth at the checkers. Logano passed a remarkable 147 cars during the course of the event. With the top-five finish, Logano remains fourth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings, 62 behind leader Kevin Harvick.

“Passing all those cars was fun but the rest of it we just did a terrible job of executing this race. We made mistake after mistake. Whether it was me on pit road or everything we did it seemed. We had a fast AAA Insurance Ford Fusion and that is what saved us. Execution was not very good tonight and we all just have to raise our game a little bit and understand why we made mistakes and clean it up going forward.”