Start: 1st | Stage One: 13th | Stage Two: 9th | Finish: 9th | Points: 24th

Joey Logano led the field to green in the No. 22 Pennzoil Ford Mustang Sunday afternoon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and battled through handling issues on the opening run of the 400-mile event, shuffling him outside the top-10 during the opening run. The No. 22 team dialed in several adjustments on pit road in the early going, but a vibration that came on in the closing laps of Stage 1 relegated Logano to a 13th-place finish in the opening segment. Logano raced his way back into the top-10 following the green-flag pit cycle in Stage 2 despite a loose-handling condition in traffic but held his own through the green-and-white checkered flag on lap 165 to pick up a ninth-place finish in Stage 2. Logano continued to keep top-10 pace in the final stage and was scored seventh when the caution flew with 33 laps to go. One final four-tire stop with a round of adjustments set Logano up to restart from the inside of row three with 28 laps to go before ultimately coming away with a ninth-place finish – marking his 13th-career top-10 finish in 22 starts at Las Vegas.

“We fired off a little bit off and lost a lot of track position in the first stage. We got our balance to where it was close, but only in the long run. Once we got seven laps into a run we were able to run top-three times. Unfortunately we lost too many spots on the restarts. We executed well on pit road and our No. 22 team did a good job. We just didn’t fire off fast enough or have good enough restarts.”

 

WHAT’S NEXT: The NASCAR Cup Series closes out the West Coast swing at Phoenix Raceway for the Shriners Children’s 500 on Sunday, March 10. Coverage begins at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.