Joey Logano addresses Carson Hocevar role in wreck that 'scared the hell out' of him
During the Brickyard 400, Joey Logano found himself out of the race early. Carson Hocevar went three-wide and Logano was caught up in his mess. The NASCAR champion addressed the wreck after being checked out at the care center.
Joey Logano and Jimmie Johnson were DNFs as a result of this wreck. Carson Hocevar saw a hole between Noah Gragson and Austin Dillon. He got his nose in there, and then the hole collapsed as the field went into the turn.
It was an eager move, and perhaps one he didn’t have to make in that moment. Ryan Blaney went to the inside of the track as a result, he hit Johnson, and the 84 car went up the track and hit Logano.
The Team Penske driver did not expect the wreck at all.
“It scared the hell out of me. It scared the hell out of me, never saw it,” Logano said, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “Just, I don’t know, I mean Carson had a good restart and filled the gap in the center and you can’t blame him for that, but he went for a little bit more, got a little greedy it seems like.
“Blaney shut the door on him then the door got shut in my face eventually two rows up, it just kind of caught up to me as it kind of tagged everybody. So, I hate it because I felt like our team did a good job of giving me a good Shell Pennzoil Mustang. One that was fast, we could run with the 11 there at the end of the stage, and we pitted right before the end of the second stage to try to cycle ourselves up.”
Joey Logano wanted to see strategy play out
Despite being on the lead of his strategy, Joey Logano never got to see it play out. He had put himself in position up until being wrecked out of the race late. Another run of bad luck for the two-time champion.
Logano is now wondering what could have been.
“More cars stayed out than I thought and they were banking on a lot of cautions which they’re getting right now,” Logano continued to Pockrass. “So, I don’t know exactly how the strategy would have worked out but we were at the lead of our strategy and that’s what the goal is. Any time you get to the lead of your own strategy, there’s so many different ones at Indy but if you get to the lead of that you’ve got a shot at it. So, I feel like we positioned ourselves where we needed to the best we could, and the racing gods weren’t on our side.”
Joey Logano is lucky he has a win this season. If the playoffs were based purely on points, he’d be in trouble. Take that win away, Logano is only 15th in points. Right now, the last driver in the postseason field is Ross Chastain. Bubba Wallace is only seven points back, though.