"That one stings a little bit" - Here's why Joey Logano feels the NASCAR Darlington race was 'a missed opportunity'
At the start of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs on Sunday at Darlington Raceway, Joey Logano competed with his No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Mustang. During the qualifying session, Logano performed well and earned pole position for the Cook Out Southern 500 in the final round of qualifying, where he ran a lap of 29.181 seconds.
Logano's pole is his second of the 2022 season, with both coming at Darlington. He won the pole for the Goodyear 400 at the track in May, which he went on to win. Starting from pole position, Logano led 64 laps out of 65 at stage one, which we could say he had a good run.
Came up just short of the Darlington sweep, but the No. 22 led 64 laps after starting on the pole and netted a P4 finish.
@joeylogano heads to Kansas leading the playoff standings. https://t.co/N0AeiNQOHP
Despite leading 64 laps at stage one, Joey Logano had a pit miscalculation during the stop, which cost him track position, and he finished Stage 1 in 11th place. Speaking during the post-race interview, he described the day at Darlington Raceway as a "solid day but a missed opportunity." In his statement, Joey Logano said:
“It’s a solid day but a missed opportunity is probably where I would put it. With so many others having trouble, every time you come to the Southern 500, especially in the playoffs, you’ve just got to survive, and you get a solid finish. That’s what we were able to do is finish fourth after so many teams had issues. "
He added,
"We had plenty of our own issues, too. We gave up track position a couple times and then we got caught with that caution and lost track position fairly late in the race, and then we just battled hard.”
Logano further added that although it was hard on the field, he battled back to the top 5, which he was happy about because they scored so many points.
“It’s really hard to come up through the field here. It’s really hard to pass and I was able to kind of battle back and get a top five out of it, which is OK. I mean, you’ve got to be happy about it because we scored a lot of points and that’s what it’s all about here in the first round, but also a missed opportunity to win the Southern 500 and I really want that one. That one stings a little bit because I think we were better than the cars in front of us if we had the air. If we were able to stay towards the front we could tune to cleaner air, instead of going in the back and trying to tune to dirty air. We just set ourselves back too far.”
He also mentioned that he was lucky to finish in 4th position after many NASCAR drivers and teams had issues on the track. Although Logano and Team Penske also had some issues on track, they battled hard to get back on track.
How Joey Logano performed at the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway
Joey Logano worked hard on the track to take home the victory. Despite the hardships and struggles on the track, Logano managed to secure 4th position. The 32-year-old made up lost ground in Stage 2, including a late restart in which he pushed his way back to the fourth position at the end of Stage 2.
Racing into the night. https://t.co/RwZxxSTX3F
Joey Logano moved back up to second as the final stage began, but he caught a lap down when the caution came out during a pit stop. Logano started from outside the top 10 and worked his way back to fourth place by the end of the race.