Start: 3rd
Finish: 2nd

Stage 1 Finish: 18th
Stage 2 Finish: 4th

Joey Logano fought a tight-handling No. 22 Ford Mustang in the front of the field during the early going of Sunday afternoon’s Daytona 500. After finishing Stage 1 in 18th, Logano took the lead for the first time on Lap 111 following a green flag pit cycle with teammates Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric in the draft behind him. Logano ultimately settled for a fourth-place result in Stage 2 and restarted the final stage 18th. Green flag pit stops on Lap 180 cycled Logano to second place before a late-race caution sent the race to overtime where he restarted second in line in the outside lane. Logano was pushed to the lead with two to go, but the inside line formed to get by him prior to the caution flag waving, setting up another green-white-checkered attempt. Logano again made a charge to the front on the second overtime attempt and challenged Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. for the lead, although his efforts were halted with a race-ending caution.

“Second is the worst, man. You’re so close. Leading the white flag lap there, I was up front. Kyle gave me a good push and, yeah, you’re watching in the mirror and you’re three wide across there. I felt like the three wide was going to hurt a lane; looked like Kyle was getting pushed ahead, and then Ricky started getting pushed ahead. I knew if I went to the bottom, my car didn’t handle good enough. I already got pushed off the bottom once and I thought, if I go down there I’m probably going to get wrecked, and I didn’t know if I can get down there in time to throw the block and so I didn’t want to wreck my car either. Then you don’t expect them to wreck either. You think you’re racing to the checkered flag and you put yourself in the best position to try to win at the start-finish line, and just caution came out — You wish you could race to the end. Obviously you can’t when they wreck that much.”