AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile oval, Fort Worth, Texas)

No. 22 AAA Ford Fusion driven by Joey Logano

Sunday, November 3

• Joey Logano qualified the No 22 AAA Ford Fusion in the 12th position following Friday afternoon’s qualifying session at Texas Motor Speedway.
• Following a fifth-place finish at Texas in the spring, Logano had a good idea what it would take for his No. 22 Ford to be fast and it showed early on, as Logano broke into the top 10 just 20 laps into the race.
• Logano continued a steady progression to the front of the field as he made his way into the top five after the first two rounds of pit stops. By lap 60, Logano was solidly running in the fifth position.
• Crew chief Todd Gordon made a number of adjustments on the No. 22 AAA Ford all afternoon long, trying to keep up with changing track conditions. Heavy cloud cover, lower temperatures and high winds kept the team guessing all day long, but significant wedge adjustments seemed to make the car come alive.
• Just past the lap-100 mark, Logano was once again running inside the top five. For the rest of the afternoon, outside of shuffling the order during green-flag pit stops, Logano ran among the top five race leaders.
• Gordon continued to make solid adjustments and Logano remained one of the cars to beat. For the final third of the race, Logano ran either second or third, trying to chase down the No. 48 car of Jimmie Johnson.
• Following the final restart of the race, Logano was running second and had his sights set on the leader. Then, through the final round of green-flag stops, Logano slipped one position to third place.
• Over the final laps, Logano used up his rear tires trying to catch second place and he had to settle for third place.
• The finish was Logano’s 11th top-five result of the season, a career-best and the third-best among all NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers.
• With the result, Logano moved up two positions to ninth in the Sprint Cup Series point standings.

IT LOOKED LIKE YOU HAD ONE OF THE BEST CARS TODAY. HOW WAS YOUR RACE FROM WHERE THE WEEKEND STARTED?

“The guys on the AAA Ford Fusion did a great job overnight looking at what Brad’s car had and what we went through in practice. There were times in practice I thought we were one of the fastest cars here and sometimes in practice I thought we were a 10th-15th place car. We went through our notes and made sure we understood all the changes and put together a fast race car today. From the start of the race we started moving our way forward and I thought we were a second or third place car all night. I don’t know what number I came in to pit but a couple laps before that Dale (Earnhardt Jr.) got in front of me and I tried my heart out trying to pass him. We short filled the car and got a little too tight and couldn’t get to his outside or cross him up good underneath him. Overall we can’t be disappointed with a third-place finish but the 48 car was just ridiculously fast.”