Ill-handling car results in tough finish for Logano at Kansas

Joey Logano qualified the No. 20 Dollar General Toyota in the 8th position for Sunday afternoon’s 267-lap Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway.

Joey Logano, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

Photo by: Action Sports Photography

Soon after though, Logano radioed in and said a word for the first time that he would repeat all afternoon long, “tight, tight, tight.” Logano said the car was tight from the center off.

Pit strategy would be the name of the game at Kansas. On the first stop of the day, crew chief Jason Ratcliff called for just two tires on the No. 20 Dollar General Toyota. On the second stop, four tires was the call. Each time, Ratcliff called for major adjustments to try and get the tight condition out of the car.

While working to get the handle better on the Dollar General ride, Logano fell back as far as 24th, mostly because of the varying pit strategies of the field.

As the race wore on, Logano continued to complain of a tight condition and said none of the changes were making the car any better. Despite the handling issues, Logano was able to avoid a number of crashes throughout the day and kept himself in a position to get a top-10 finish.

With less than 50 laps to go, Logano was running just inside the top-10 when the tight condition got as bad as it had been all day.

Over the race’s final circuits, Logano did all he could to hold onto the machine and keep it out of the wall. In the end, he slipped all the way back to 19th when the checkers flew.

Logano’s Post-Race Thoughts: “You don’t get any more frustrating days than that right there. I don’t know what was wrong with the Dollar General Toyota. We will take the car back to the shop and hopefully find out some more about what happened. The car was tight at the beginning of the race but it seemed like something we could live with and work through. Jason seemed to make all the right calls that would loosen the car up and get rid of the tight condition but everything we did just made the car worse. The more I was around guys the tighter the car would be. We started being just tight in the center and off and by the end we were right from the entry all the way through the exit. It was a frustrating day for sure. You don’t want to be as good as we were in testing and practice and come out of here with a 19th-place finish, especially with all of the crashes and cautions that we were able to avoid today. We will check it out and see what happen and learn from this for the next race.”

Source: Joe Gibbs Racing