Joey Logano Comes Up Short At Auto Club

Joey Logano was looking for his second win in the 2017 NASCAR Xfinity Series today at Auto Club Speedway. His previous win came at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where Logano started fourth and won. However, Logano hasn’t visited victory lane at Auto Club since 2012, driving for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Problems came early in the race for Logano after leading most of stage one. He was caught speeding on pit road and was sent to the rear. After a one lap restart, Logano ended up in the 35^th position to end stage one.

Logano spent most of stage two rallying from behind and passing cars all over the place. It wasn’t until lap 70 where he rebounded from 35^th to finish second in stage two.

This set up a lap 77 restart, where Logano and Busch were the front runners. Logano took the lead from Busch on the same lap off turn four. Logano held on to the lead until a lap 81 caution for Ross Chastain. After the restart on lap 88, Busch took the lead until lap 91 where Logano passed him for the top spot. 

However, things started to go better to worse for Logano during a lap 94 caution. The leaders, along with Logano came down to pit under caution. When the no.22 Discount Tire crew were changing tires, the jack came off the car and caused Logano to lose several positions. He was able to stay on the lead lap but restarted 26^th for stage three. 

Just like in stage two, Logano had to make up a lot of ground and this is where he showed his true talent. With 33 laps to go, Logano ran down race leader Kyle Busch and passed him for the lead. While it looked-liked Logano’s race to win, there was another challenger, and his name was Kyle Larson.

Larson was chasing down Logano with 23 laps to go. Logano held on to the lead until 11 laps to go where Larson passed him for first. The big break came for Logano when the caution came out two laps later. He and a few other leaders pitted for four fresh tires and fuel, except for Spencer Gallagher who only took two tires.

With five laps to go for the restart, Logano restarted behind Gallagher who got a bad start and checked everyone up. Logano had to spend the rest of those remaining laps playing catch up. On the last lap, Logano gave Larson one last challenge for the lead but was unsuccessful, and came up .127 seconds short.

It was Logano’s 86^th top 5 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

It was his fourth career top 5 at Auto Club Speedway.