Start: 12th |  Finish: 34th  | Points: 15th

Stage One: 14th  |  Stage Two: 32nd 

Joey Logano was collected in a multi-car incident in the opening laps of the final stage Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to bring his day to an abrupt end, culminating in a 34^th-place finish. The 22 team was the top car among those on the same strategy Sunday afternoon, as crew chief Paul Wolfe opted to run long during the opening stage while others split the stage in half. Once Logano worked his way up to fourth in the running order during the green flag pit cycle, Wolfe called the Shell-Pennzoil Ford to pit road on lap 38 for a four tire stop and a round of adjustments. Logano made his way back to 14th in the running order by the end of Stage 1, but the choice to run long allowed him to stay out during the stage break and restart from the outside of row two. Following a pair of cautions and a call for right side tires only under yellow, Logano charged his way back into the top-five by lap 85 before Wolfe called him to pit road with four to go in the stage in order to need only one more stop for fuel to make it to the checkered flag and flip their track position before the start of the final stage. Logano managed to come off pit road in front of the leader and avoided going a lap down prior to the end of Stage 2, resulting in a 32^nd-place finish in the segment. About half the field hit pit road during the stage break as teams continued to vary their strategies to set themselves up for the final run of the afternoon as Logano lined up 16^th to take the green flag. Following a caution on lap 105, Logano lined up 13^th and a multi-car incident unraveled in the row behind him on the entry of turn one, sending the No. 84 into Logano’s left rear quarter panel and sending him head-on into the outside wall, bringing an end to the No. 22 team’s day before they had a chance to see their strategy play out.

“It seems like they were three wide a couple of rows behind me and the wreck caught me, unfortunately. It looks like [Carson] Hocevar sent it down the center and just kind of stuffed it in there late. Unfortunately it caught up to me. He right reared Jimmie [Johnson] into my left rear and nosed our Shell-Pennzoil Mustang into the wall. It is a bummer. You come here to Indy once a year and all you dream of is kissing the bricks. My team gave me a great race car and we were the leader of our strategy and that is kind of all you can hope for, to get to the lead of your strategy. And we were going to have a shorter pit stop and we were going to try to gain some spots the restart as a lot of guys were staying out. We could have a shorter stop than them and that is when we were going to cycle back up to the front, hopefully, but we never got to see it through.”

WHAT’S NEXT: The NASCAR Cup Series takes a two-week break before returning to action on Sunday, August 11 for the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway. Coverage begins at 6 p.m. ET on USA, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.