Joey Logano confident in his decisions over the past 4 weeks
Joey Logano said Friday that he was confident in the way he’s handled the situation he’s found himself in with Matt Kenseth.
Kenseth is suspended for Sunday’s race at Texas and the next race at Phoenix after intentionally crashing Logano from the lead at Martinsville. He was exacting payback from contact he and Logano had at Kansas while racing for the lead.
“I am confident in the decisions that we have made,” Logano said. “I am confident in the decisions I made as a driver and the decisions we made as a team … that was a racing thing what happened at Kansas and I wouldn’t expect a phone call from someone else if that happened. I thought about it and it is a decision you make and you think about how you handle every situation and that is now the way you want to see a race end in Kansas that day.
“You want to battle it out all the way to the end. You don’t want to see that happen but when I looked at it, the more I looked at it, it was just a racing thing. It just happened. It was unfortunate but I would understand if it happened to me.”
Denny Hamlin, Kenseth’s teammate, said after Kenseth’s suspension was announced Tuesday that Logano hadn’t reached out to Kenseth after the Kansas incident. Logano has maintained the contact was the product of hard racing and referenced the spring race at Texas when he was blocking Kevin Harvick to support his point.
“I took that risk and I knew the consequences,” Logano said. “He moved me out of the way. I said that is what I had coming to me. He kept his nose in there. I knew the chances I was taking. There was nothing I said to him. I didn’t expect a phone call from that. I didn’t expect anything. I felt like in that case I was in the wrong. I put myself in that situation and I got moved up out of the groove.”
While Logano didn’t go for a slide at Texas, Kenseth did at Kansas. Kenseth finished 14th and was eliminated from the Chase a week later. Logano won at Kansas and was looking for his fourth-straight win when he was crashed from the lead at Martinsville.
He also said he’s still confident about his chances to be in contention at Homestead for the title for the second year in a row. He hasn’t finished lower than 12th in the past six Texas races and won in the spring of 2014.
“To be honest I am not convinced [Martinsville] is a bad thing,” Logano said. “Our team is more fired up than ever. I am more focused than ever … Is it the way we wanted it to go? No, of course not. Did we get the finish we felt we deserved that day? No, but this team has plenty of confidence coming off three in a row and in position for four. There is plenty of confidence and more drive than there has ever been.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
