Joey Logano Earns Pole, Leads Most Laps, Finishes Fourth at Bristol

Post Race Highlights:

• Joey Logano earned the pole for Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series event at Bristol Motor Speedway, his 17th career NNS pole (11th on all time list)
• Logano jumped out to the lead early and paced the field, opening up a nearly four-second lead and holding down the top spot until lap 67 when he was passed by Kyle Busch.
• A strong pit stop by the GameStop team got Logano back out in the top spot on lap 107 and he held the top spot once again until lap 159
• During pit stops on lap 159, the GameStop team took four tires while several other cars took two. Logano came out of the pits in fifth position.
• A bad set of tires made Logano’s car incredibly loose during the next green flag run and Logano fell from fifth to eight, loosing valuable track position in the process.
• Adam Stevens called Logano into the pits during the final caution and changed four tires, getting Logano back out on the track in the seventh position with just 25 laps to go.
• During the final run of the race, Logano was the fastest car on the track by nearly three-tenths of a second and easily drove from seventh to fourth. Logano was faster than all three of the cars in front of him, but unfortunately ran out of laps, settling for a fourth-place finish.

Logano’s Post-Race Thoughts:

“Man, what a great GameStop Toyota we had today. There is no reason this car shouldn’t be sitting over there in Victory Lane right now. This No. 18 was the best car out there today. I don’t know what happened on that third green-flag run. I don’t know if we had a bad set of tires or what. We took four and should have been fast, but the car got wicked loose right there and we kept loosing spot after spot. Finally, the caution came out and we were able to come in and get four more tires and we were just as fast as we were all day long, but by that point, we only had like 20 laps to try and make up all that track position and we just didn’t have enough time. We got up to fourth but ran out of laps. We were faster than the 22 (Keselowski) and I am pretty sure we were faster than the front two cars as well; just ran out of time. It’s really too bad because I want to win one of these races here at Bristol. We’ve been so close the last two times here.

“The car was awesome there early in the race. We started on the pole and were able to jump out front and just ride. The lapped traffic was really bad out there today. They really just stayed in the way and didn’t give much. We were struggling getting through them and that is what allowed Kyle to catch me. But really in the end, it was the bad set of tires that killed us. If we were like what we were at the end, we could have gotten by all of those guys that just took two and gotten back out front. It’s just too bad, because we won the pole, led the most laps and had the best car. Not much you can do about it though. Maybe we’ll get them here in the fall.”