Joey Logano started fourth and raced inside the top 10 through the first 54 laps of Saturday night’s Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway before a blown right front tire sent the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion into the turn 4 wall and out of the event. Logano started the race on the outside of row two and dropped several positions on the first lap after getting out of the groove in turn 1. At the lap 25 competition caution, crew chief Todd Gordon called for air pressure adjustments to compliment the track bar and brake bias adjustments Logano was making inside the car. On the restart, the team would begin working their way back to the front, before getting loose and making contact with the outside wall and damaging the right-rear quarter panel on the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil/Autotrader Ford Fusion. The crew began preparing a body panel patch to repair the car as Logano wheeled the wounded machine around the track waiting for a caution to make the needed repairs. However, the damage and ill-handling condition eventually led to a blown right front tire at lap 54. Logano was able to drive the car back to the garage, but the damage forced the team to retire from the race.

“It’s hard to say what happened there for sure, I was just looking at the tire in there. I got loose and hit the wall about 10 laps before that and the car gets really loose when you tap the right-rear quarter over. You’re trying to slow down a lot and the brakes started going away. I don’t know what happened after that, if a rotor blew up or what made the tire go down, but the right-front went flat and I was pretty much along for the ride after that. I hit a ton, so I’m pretty impressed by the way the safety is in these race cars. That was one of the hardest hits I’ve had in a while. I had a long time to look at the wall before I hit it and not really slow down much before I got there. It just kind of stinks for our race team to be crashed out so early in the race, but we’ll just go back to Loudon and go back to work.