Perhaps no one was as disappointed Saturday night at Richmond as Joey Logano.
Logano won here in the spring but saw his win encumbered for a post-race inspection failure. He did not win a race the rest of the regular season and fell outside the top 16 in points.
Saturday night, he really wasn’t a factor in the race. He started 12th, and ran inside the top five for a time. But on the final restart was outside the five.
He did have a chance though. The final restart came in overtime with two laps to go. In a chaotic final lap, Martin Truex Jr. spun after contact with Denny Hamlin; Logano charged through and nearly pulled it off. However, he came up one spot short to winner Kyle Larson. He finished second and is not part of this year’s 16 driver playoff field.
“Yeah, it stings a little bit,” Logano said. “Last time we were sitting hereafter a race, it was after a win, and this time it’s after a second, which overall if you look at our Richmond overall for a season with the two races, you’d say, that’s pretty good, a first and a second. But just overall, obviously it stings to come up one spot short and not be able to get into the playoffs. It is what it is. It’s reality, and we will move on.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that at this point,” he later added. “You’ve just got to keep looking out the windshield and not the rearview mirror. It is what it is. I’m proud of the effort that we’ve been able to give. This was one of the best races we’ve had in a long time, which is a good thing, but it was just one short.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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