Logano had a 'ripping' car but couldn't beat dirty air at Indianapolis

Joey Logano was right where he wanted to be, and his car was doing exactly what he needed it to do.

Sometimes, though, speed and track position aren’t enough to beat dirty air, as Logano found Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It resulted in a third-place finish for the driver in the Brickyard 400.

“She was ripping,” Logano said of his Ford in the final stint. “It took me a minute to get her rolling, which is the story of our team. It just takes a minute. Then about 10 laps in I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, there she is,’ and she started going.

“I joked on the radio that I had flashbacks of Tony Stewart with the ‘Here kitty, kitty’ moment, and I didn’t quite pull off the full Tony Stewart experience.”

Stewart used the line in the closing laps of the 2007 race at Indianapolis as he was chasing down Kevin Harvick for the race win. Stewart prevailed, but Logano, who did catch second-place Christopher Bell and eventual race winner Corey Heim, was unable to do the same.

“It was fun catching them, but I hit the three to four car lengths back, and all of a sudden you’re a half-tenth quicker, and then you’re not quicker at all,” Logano said. “At that point, you’re just hoping [Heim] and [Bell] get racing, and there is a chance to get them side by side, and you’re close enough to capitalize.”

None of that materialized as Heim managed his gap and a loose-handling race car. Indianapolis has long been a race of track position and difficult passes, which has been exaggerated with the latest generation of race car. Heim took the lead on the final restart with 34 to go, with Bell and Logano settling into second and third, and that’s how the race finished.

Logano took a shot at it on the second-to-last restart, however. The three-time series champion knew that was the moment with 42 laps to go as he restarted on the inside of the second row behind Heim, who had Denny Hamlin to his outside. He drove it into Turn 1 and tried to get underneath him, but it wasn’t enough.

The move did allow Hamlin to take the lead, as Heim had to go into a defensive move. The final caution flew on the same lap as the restart and re-racked the field.

“I know my only chance to win the race – it’s the Brickyard – is to make the move on the leader,” Logano said of that restart. “So, I was like, ‘Well, I got to take it.’ The run just came way too late into the corner, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m still going to take it. What the heck? I’ll do it.’ That allowed [Bell] to get in front of me. I guess right now in the moment, I’m looking at it saying, gosh, did I do the right thing because I made the move and it didn’t work?

“But if a couple of things change, then you look like a hero on that one. And if you don’t do it, you restart third where [Bell] was, and you roll out second, and then you have a shot to get him at the end because [Heim] fell off a lot there at the end. … It’s so easy to Monday morning quarterback this thing, but how do you know? You feel like you have to make the move when you have the opportunity, no matter how low the risk of a move to pull it off here; you have to always take it here. It just didn’t work out.”

The final restart, with 34 laps to go, saw Logano choose to restart as the second driver in the second row, but on the outside. He quickly shot to third place, but then had to spend much of the run closing the gap on Heim and Bell.

Although disappointed in again missing out on a Brickyard 400 win, the speed in his car had Logano the happiest, and he felt he had the winning car on the last run. Sunday was his third straight top-10 finish, and he moved to 13th in the standings.

“It’s been a while since I had fun in a race car,” Logano said. “You start to wonder a lot of things, and this last month has been pretty fun. I can see the front and do things, and I feel like I remember how to drive. I was wondering there for a second.

“It’s nice to see that speed back in our team, and obviously the timing couldn’t be better. No stage points today but a solid finish, so that’s good points, and we’ll see where that puts us there.”