Joey Logano and the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion team qualified seventh in Friday afternoon’s qualifying session at Pocono Raceway. Logano has now qualified eighth or better in nine races this season.

As the race began, Logano settled into seventh place and focused on trying to move forward. He was able to race his way up to sixth, but the Shell-Pennzoil Ford began to develop a tight-handling condition and Logano slipped back to seventh in the running order.

As different pit strategies began to play out at Pocono, Logano was able to work his way into the top-five by lap 75.

The Shell-Pennzoil Ford continued to handle tight throughout most of the afternoon, especially in the famed tunnel turn. It was a problem that hindered Logano over the course of the race until the team pulled a packer in the left front shock during the fourth pit stop of the day.

With various strategies developing up and down pit lane, Logano ran as low as 19th and as high as second place for the rest of the afternoon.

After pitting for four tires and slicing through the field, Logano came into the pits for a final time for just two tires and fuel on lap 132. With quick work by the Shell-Pennzoil crew under green-flag conditions, the No. 22 Ford returned to the track in the fourth position.

On a late-race restart with just 10 laps to go, Logano informed his team that there was a problem with the engine. As the green flag waved, Logano had no power and fell to the back of the field. Rather than risking further damage to the engine and putting oil down on the track, Logano pulled behind the wall to retire the car as he was relegated to a 40th-place finish.

With the result, Logano fell to ninth in the series driver point standings. He remains third in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chase rankings.

YOU WERE IN A POSITION TO HAVE A GOOD FINISH. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE RESTART?

“I’ve never had that happen under caution before. I swerved my tires getting ready to go and we were rolling around turn three to take the green and all of a sudden it started sounding weird and we lost some power somewhere and lost oil pressure once I noticed it was done. I didn’t want to lay any oil out on the track and ruin Brad’s chances for a win there, so we just pulled into the pits and called it a day. Unfortunately we didn’t get to have any fun there at the end because I feel like we could easily have had both our cars into the top five there. We weren’t very fast all weekend long, but we found some stuff last night and the car was a lot better today. I think we could have finished third or fourth today for sure.”