While Stage 2 was clean throughout, we are getting multiple cautions to start the final stage. Joey Logano and Corey LaJoie were taken out on this one. Logano now has three finishes of P28 or worse this NASCAR season.
Despite having speed each week either in qualifying or practice, Joey Logano can’t get the finishes he needs. Wrecks and incidents on the track have plagued the two-time champion so far this season.
Right now, the only thing that is going to make Logano’s season better is a win sometime soon. Logano and LaJoie are both DNFs today.
To start this final stage, we had a few cautions one right after another. These Phoenix restarts are a mess most of the time. In fact, this caution came out after a caution for Kyle Busch spinning on his own.
Then, on the restart following the Joey Logano incident, Denny Hamlin spun out on his own while racing for the lead. That caution ended up flipping the field on pit strategy and made this race a whole new ballgame.
If you thought this race was getting a little stale with the green flag runs, well you got your wish. Chaos. Now we will see if Tyler Reddick and Christopher Bell can race back to the front with the two fastest cars of the day.
Joey Logano, plagued with bad luck
We saw it more than once today, those cars in the rear of the field are always trouble. Especially at Phoenix. If you are in the middle or the back of the pack, then you are going to be racing aggressively and most likely three or four wide.
When you have that hornet’s nest in the back, it leads to wrecks, plain and simple. Logano just couldn’t get himself out of that section of the field, with an unusually slow car in today’s race. Logano also paid the price for it, plain and simple.
Team Penske teammate Austin Cindric was in a similar spot to start the race. He found himself out after just Lap 6 in the 500km race. Something has to start going right for Logano or people will start to wonder if he can make the postseason.
Slow your horses a bit, I’m not ready to pull that trigger yet. However, if we don’t start to see winning speed out of this No. 22 team in a race soon, it will be time to panic. For now, Joey Logano needs to just worry about finishing a race in the top-10, ideally next week.
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