Start: 6th | Stage One: 6th | Stage Two: 5th | Finish: 6th | Points: 14th

Joey Logano wheeled the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Mustang to a sixth-place finish Sunday afternoon at Martinsville Speedway, marking an even 10-straight races with a top-10 result at the Virginia short track. Logano started from sixth and maintained his track position throughout the 80-lap first stage before crew chief Paul Wolfe made the call for right side tires only during the stage break as the 22-team won the race off pit road to restart Stage 2 from the point. Logano was able to keep the field in his mirror for almost the entirety of the second stage before the left side tires began to wear out as he lost the battle for the lead with 11 laps left in the segment before ultimately coming away with a fifth-place finish in Stage 2. After restarting the final stage from seventh, Logano settled in on four fresh tires as a long, green flag run ensued before the pit cycle began with just over 100 laps to go. Wolfe called Logano to pit road on lap 299 for four tires and fuel and the No. 22 cycled to eighth in the running order as the laps began to wind down. With three laps to go, the caution flag flew for a single-car incident to set up a green-white-checkered finish for the second-consecutive week. Logano took the green flag from the inside of row four and carried the momentum from the low line to cross the line sixth. Logano led a season-high 84 laps on the afternoon while gaining five spots in the driver points standings with the result.

“It was a solid day. I think we got fifth or sixth place points in each stage, somewhere around there. We led a bunch of laps. We got out front, but the tire came apart at the end of that stage there, which cost us a stage win, unfortunately. We took that risk to do it and ended up in the same spot that we were going to be, so really no risk there. After that, we kind of lost control of the race, and once that happened, once you lost the lead, nobody was going to pass anybody. The only car I saw passing was the 12. That was pretty impressive. The rest of us just followed each other all day.”

 

WHAT’S NEXT: The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Texas Motor Speedway for Round 9 of the 2024 season on Sunday, April 14 for the Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400. Coverage begins at 3:00 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.