AVONDALE, ARIZ. (AP) - Too much strategy got the best of Joey Logano.
Unsure of what his team was doing or where he was in relation to the leaders, Logano simply kept his foot on the gas and kept passing cars, a ploy that ended up earning him a top-10 finish at Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday.
“There was a lot of strategy and it confused the heck out of me,” Logano said. “At times we were leading and at times we were 24th. It’s hard to say where we were.”
The confusion came from some of the timing.
Hoping to gain track position, Logano’s team had him stay out of the pits during a caution, a strategy that backfired when he had to come in under green. Believing he was about to run out of fuel, Logano started conserving fuel at the end of the race, but got a break when a caution came out. He was 14th on the restart and managed to work his way up to ninth before it was over.
“We just needed the cautions to get going again, so we had a decent car,” he said. “We didn’t really lose much in points, but overall it was a weird race because you don’t know where you’re at and you just pass the cars in front of you. I didn’t know what place was in, I just kept running because it was too confusing for me.”
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