Logano settles for third after losing WWTR lead to Larson

Joey Logano needed a little help from friends on Sunday to seal the deal at World Wide Technology Raceway, but the Team Penske driver ended up all alone at the front.

Logano had lost the lead to eventual winner and Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson with 13 laps to go in regulation. It came off a restart, and Larson was deemed to be ahead of Logano when the caution flew on that same lap (228). It was the winning move, as Logano never led again, despite having three restarts to take a shot.

“The restart where Larson took the lead, that’s where I lost it, obviously,” said Logano after finishing third. “He just rolled the bottom there really good and cleared me, which was really surprising. His first like three laps of every run was pretty spectacular, and he had a bunch of three-lap runs there at the end. And once he got there, then the [No.] 48 got there, the [No.] 24 got there, and I had no homies with me, no more friends.

“I was on my own.”

On two of the final three restarts, Logano lined up to the inside of Larson on the front row. Both times, Larson cleared for the race lead. On the final restart, in double overtime, Logano, who was now running third after losing the spot to Alex Bowman, chose to take the outside lane, which put him in the second row and behind Larson.

But none of it worked. Larson cleared the field on all restarts and picked up the win. Logano, meanwhile, had to settle for his fifth top-five finish at St. Louis in five starts (for an average finish of 3.4).

“All I could hope was that Bowman really, really, really wanted to win and was willing to sling her off in there,” Logano continued. “That was really my only chance on that last one, and Larson just got a good restart and cleared. There was nothing I could do to manipulate anything. I was really just along for the ride on the last couple of restarts because we lost it before that.

“It’s a good run; we got a lot of stage points and finished in the top five again, which is obviously what we need to do, but thinking about what 25 points [for winning] would feel like right about now, it does sting some.”

Logano, who started from the pole, led the most laps at 96. He also won the first stage.

A 54-point day, the second-most to Larson, moved Logano up one place in the championship standings. Logano sits seventh in the Chase but with a 51-point gap still to overcome.

“Well, we got closer to where we need to be,” Logano said. “But when you have an opportunity like that, you have the car like that, you need to win, and we just didn’t make it happen.”