• Joey Logano started third and finished 10th Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway, driving the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Mustang. Logano battled handling issues throughout most of the race with a car that ran loose on corner entry and tight in the center of the turns. As the No. 22 team made slight gains with each adjustment on the Shell-Pennzoil Mustang during the race, Logano brought home the team’s 10th top-10 result of the season.
• Logano spent the majority of the opening laps running inside the top five, but he reported that the Shell-Pennzoil Mustang was handling too tight. On the first stop of the race, crew chief Paul Wolfe addressed the handling with tape on the nose and air pressure adjustments on the No. 22 Ford. The team elected to pit again, under caution prior to the end of the stage, making slight adjustments. Logano would finish Stage 1 in the ninth position.
• During the second stage, Logano continued to run among the top five before the handling faded back to free on corner entry. As a result, Logano fell to the 10th position by lap 154. A caution flag at lap 173 provided an opportunity for the Shell-Pennzoil crew to pit a make a wedge adjustment and install four fresh tires. Logano was running in the 13th position prior to the caution. He finished Stage 2 in 12th place and he reported the car was still too free on entry, but even tighter through the center of the turns. The team elected to pit at the end of the stage to make further adjustments to the No. 22 Ford Mustang.
• In the final stage, Logano moved back inside the top 10 as multiple restarts generated heat cycles in his Goodyear Racing Eagle tires and improved the corner entry condition. A caution at lap 218 brought the Shell-Pennzoil Mustang down pit road for four tires and a trackbar adjustment.
• Logano continued to run among the top 10 for the second half of the final stage. He relayed to the team that the handling was too tight on the Shell-Pennzoil Mustang to make forward progress and he also kept his pace steady over the final stint in order to save fuel. Logano crossed the finish line in the 10th position.
“We just weren’t very good. We just kept grinding and grinding to get every spot we could and did what we could to try and get the best finish. Tenth was the best we were going to do. That’s about where we ran all day anyway after the first few laps. Once we lost our track position that’s where we were.”
