Logano, Keselowski haven’t talked about last-lap Daytona crash. They will soon
Joey Logano said he hasn’t spoken with Penske teammate Brad Keselowski since a last-lap crash at the Daytona 500 in which contact between the drivers’ cars sent both spinning from the lead. Instead of Team Penske victory, Front Row Motorsports driver Michael McDowell won the race.
“To me, the biggest heartbreak of this whole thing is that there’s 400 people at Team Penske asking where their Daytona 500 bonus is and it’s up in a ball of flames up in Turn 3 right now,” Logano told reporters Friday morning.
He confirmed that he and Keselowski haven’t spoken since the accident, but said he plans to have a conversation with his teammate before the next Cup race this Sunday at the Daytona road course.
“I think it’s probably best to cool your jets a little bit before the conversation happens,” Logano said. “ ... I think everyone cooling off is probably gonna be good. The analogy I used on (SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) a minute ago was it’s a marriage, and when you’re married to somebody you have to figure it out.”
Keselowski was filmed smashing his helmet on the ground in frustration next to his totaled No. 2 Ford Mustang after the incident and spoke on FOX post-race. He said he didn’t feel like he made a mistake.
“But I can’t drive everybody else’s car, so frustrating,” Keselowski said.
Logano said Friday that he didn’t feel like anyone did anything wrong.
“Everyone’s going to have different perspectives and I think that’s probably where we’re gonna be,” Logano said.
The final seconds of the rain-delayed race saw Logano in the lead with Keselowski in tow, and McDowell, in third, pushing Keselowski’s bumper. McDowell and Keselowski got disconnected as Keselowski drove low, attempting a pass at the same time Logano attempted a block. Keselowski’s car hit the left rear bumper of Logano’s No. 22 Ford and the two cars spun off each other in opposite directions. Logano went sailing into the grass and Keselowski was sent into the outside wall, collecting oncoming cars driven by Kyle Busch, Austin Cindric and Bubba Wallace. McDowell drove between the spinning cars for his first Cup Series and Daytona 500 win.
“There’s always gonna be things that you see that you want to go differently,” Logano said. “Can’t change it now though. That’s the bottom line.”
He described what he saw and how the situation changed in the final laps of the race:
“I’m watching this all develop behind me and when the 34 (McDowell) and the 2 (Keselowski) hook up, they start coming with a run, (I) throw a mild block, but when Brad moves to the left to pass me, that gets the 34 off-center on his bumper. And these cars are very unstable when they’re getting pushed...When a car gets off-center as much as McDowell was on Brad, it’s gonna push him around, just like the same way we saw the first crash happen. And at that point, watching it in slow motion and trying to dissect it, I see Brad’s hands turning left and the back-end of his car is further left than he is. That means he’s going to the right at that moment, spinning out. And that’s why I got tagged so hard in the left rear, spun me out so quick, so that’s how I see it happen.”
“...It’s quite the bummer that happened because you’re so close to winning the Great American Race and you’d think, you know, four laps before that or really the thirty laps before that, you’ve got four Fords behind you, your teammate, everyone’s working together, think everything’s gonna be fine. You’re pretty stoked about the situation. Kinda the best scenario you can possibly be in for the last 30 laps of that race, and then once I saw Brad lay back and shuffle the 4 (Harvick) out I said, ‘Okay this game’s about to change. This isn’t going the way I would’ve expected it to.’ And I knew that things were going to be a little different and that’s what kind of developed in the last few laps.”
Logano said the most frustrating part of wreck was not being able to bring home a top finish for the Penske organization.
“I’m angry about it. That part is probably what stings the most is that we had a really good shot at having a Penske 1-2 (finish) and instead we finished 12th and 13th,” Logano said.
Logano said he and Keselowski will work through it before the next race this Sunday at 3 p.m. on FOX.
“I will be forced and he will be forced to work with me,” Logano said. “We’re still teammates. We will have to figure this out. We may not have to agree on everything, but we at least have to find a way to move forward and that is gonna be the approach we need to do, because going back to the 400 men and women that work at Team Penske, we owe it to them to figure this out, and we will fix it and it’s fine.”
