TALLADEGA, Ala. — Joey Logano’s pants may not be on fire, but his ears might be burning after Matt Kenseth accused the driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford of being less than forthcoming in his assessment of last Sunday’s fateful wreck at Kansas Speedway.
Logano insists he didn’t dump Kenseth on purpose with less than five laps left in the Hollywood Casino 400, a race Kenseth desperately needed to win to earn a berth in the Eliminator Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Logano won the race. Kenseth finished 14th. And the Joe Gibbs Racing driver didn’t think much of Logano’s characterization of the decisive wreck as “hard racing.”
“Someday he might mature a little bit,” Kenseth said after Friday’s opening NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice at Talladega Superspeedway, site of Sunday’s CampingWorld.com 500 (2:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN). “But, first of all, he should have stopped running his mouth…
“And number two, he’s lying when he said he didn’t do it on purpose, because he lifted (my) tires off the ground, offset to the left, and he’s too good a race car driver to do that by accident.”
For practical purposes, Kenseth is in the same position he found himself last week—needing a victory to advance to the Eliminator Round. With victories at Charlotte and Kansas, Logano already is locked into the Chase’s third round.
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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