Joey Logano and the No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang had a strong car and was able to drive from the back on several occasions Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway, but fell victim to a late-race multi-car accident and had to settle for a 14th place finish in the Subway Firecracker 250. As the race went green and experienced several early cautions, Logano found himself hanging inside the top-10 despite getting little drafting help on the top lane. Eventually, the 25-year-old driver got put into a three-wide situation and fell to the back of the pack, dropping to the 26th position. Logano settled in and began his charge back to the front, eventually working his way to the lead before a round of green-flag stops. After the field cycled through, Logano found himself sixth, a position he would ride in for many of the remaining laps. On lap 90, Logano was able to avoid a multi-car accident, setting himself up for a sprint to the finish. With just a handful of laps to go, Logano got hooked up with Elliott Sadler and was racing to the lead when the No. 2 of Brian Scott came up to block the charging duo, causing another multi-car accident. Logano limped his damage machine back to pit road and fell a lap down before picking up a couple positions on the green-white-checkered finish, coming home 14th. Despite the finish, Logano and the No. 22 Discount Tire team remains out front in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Owners’ Championship ahead of the No. 60 from Roush Fenway Racing by 29 points.
“We had a pretty fast Discount Tire Ford Mustang, we just had to get position in the right spot and hook up with the right cars and we did at certain times. As soon as we got up there with the 1, it gets toward the end of the race and people want to race. The rest of the day, everyone was just riding around and I wanted to go but nobody wanted to go. At the end everyone started running and we got ourselves toward the front and then the 2 just misjudged it. He went to block us while we were pushing and that was a bad call on his part. It tore up a lot of race cars. I don’t know where we ended up but the guys worked as hard as they can to fix this thing and get us back out there.”