‘I did what I had to do.’ Joey Logano defends late-race move at Darlington
.JPG "Joey Logano (22) reacts in Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Darlington Raceway, Sunday, May 8, 2022, in Darlington, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)")
Jeff Gordon used to race against Joey Logano on a weekly basis, so what happened at the end of Sunday’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway wasn’t a total shock.
Logano bumped Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron, who was sporting a Gordon tribute paint scheme, out of the way for the lead in Turn 3 on the next-to-last lap to win for the first time this season.
“He is an aggressive driver so, no, this doesn’t surprise me,” said Gordon, who is now the vice chairman and co-owner of Hendrick Motorsports. “... A win is important and hard to come by. You want to get those things in every way you can. The team works hard. But you think about running into a back of a guy at Martinsville, you don’t see that at Darlington. That is the only thing that makes this stand out.”
Logano’s move didn’t surprise race fans on social media, nor those in attendance at Darlington. When he got out of his car, a chorus of boos rained down from the crowd. Byron also added it, calling Logano a “moron” in an FS1 post-race interview and telling reporters ‘he does this all the time.’
That didn’t seem to bother Logano as he talked with reporters in the media center after the race.
“I have been called a lot of things worse than a moron, some I witnessed when I got out of the car,” Logano said. “It is fine.”
Logano has been known for being an aggressive driver since he entered the Cup Series. He’s had incidents with former drivers Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman and Matt Kenseth, as well as current drivers Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.
Add Byron to the list, although it’s unsure how long things will linger.
Logano told FS1’s Race Hub last year that he had toned things down some since he became a father in 2018, but his aggressive driving tendencies showed at the end of Sunday’s race.
Logano admitted after the race in the media center that he was driving “angry” toward Byron after Logano said the Hendrick Motorsports driver ran him into the wall on the final restart with 25 laps remaining.
“I would have gone straight to the bump and run if it wasn’t how he got the lead,” Logano said. “He came off Turn 2 and drove me into the wall. … Anyone in the field would agree if someone would do that to you then the gloves are off. And if I got back there, I know what I had to do. That was the way he wanted to race, so I said let’s go. If he passed me clean, it wouldn’t have looked like that.
“He obviously knew it was coming because he checked into the corner very early. I did what I had to do. I had to win the race and get into the playoffs. All those things go into the decision.”
Rudy Fugle, Byron’s crew chief, was disappointed how things ended. He said he wished Logano would have tried to make an honest pass on the bottom, saying his driver would have stayed near the top and wouldn’t have tried to block.
“Everyone wants to be raced first but things happen,” Fugle said. “I wish we would have a lap and a quarter to race him clean when he got to us. But he took a shot at the back of us and that’s what happened. We will move on.”
