Start: 7th |  Finish: 4th 

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Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano returned behind the wheel of the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Mustang Sunday night in the inaugural Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, turning in a fourth-place effort in the 200-lap exhibition race. After taking the green flag from seventh, Logano suffered contact to the right front in the opening laps that resulted in a tight-handling condition for the duration of the first run. Logano managed to hold his standing in the top-10 before the scheduled caution on lap 100 when the No. 22 team addressed an issue with the right front toe link prior to the final run of the night. The Shell-Pennzoil Ford responded by working its way into the top-five with 44 laps to go before Logano battled the No. 23 for several laps, eventually taking over the fourth spot with 19 laps remaining where eventually took the checkered flag from.

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“I got damage early in the race, like lap three. That puts you an adjustment behind because in the 100 lap break you’re sitting there saying, ‘OK, I was really tight but was that because my toe was out a lot, or am I really that tight?’ So that makes it a challenging adjustment and really just kind of put us one adjustment behind. I think I could have maybe been in contention there. We had decent track position. I was trying to manage where I was before the 100 lap break so I could still be in the hunt. We just had a couple of mediocre restarts where I couldn’t launch as good and let a couple cars down in front of me, and then the long haul there I was able to get a couple cars there at the end of the race. I was trying to position myself to where I was in the second row and you never know what happens on a late race restart at a track like this, so it was just trying to say semi close and hope for a caution, which there never was, but, overall, I would say the race was pretty interesting.”

WHAT’S NEXT:The NASCAR Cup Series heads to Daytona International Speedway for Speedweeks and the 67th running of the prestigious DAYTONA 500 on Sunday, February 16. All the action kicks off with Practice 1 and Pole Qualifying on Wednesday, February 12.

The Clash at Bowman Gray