Joey Logano breaks down the upside to his ‘frustrating and stinging’ playoff elimination
Joey Logano is still disappointed over that early playoff exit.
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Joey Logano (Via IMAGO)
Team Penske Racing driver Joey Logano had a disappointing end to his second career title defense as he was eliminated in the Round of 16. An early crash in the finale race of the R-16 at Bristol sealed his fate. He was joined by fellow Cup champion and Ford driver Kevin Harvick on the way out of the title fight.
One of the major reasons behind the elimination was the entire Ford garage struggle, as no team other than RFK Racing was able to go beyond the limits to find speeds to win races in Mustangs. Logano’s slump surprised the whole garage as he finished inside the top 10 on 17 of the 20 races of the season. He has scored just one top-10 in the first five post-season races.
While describing their disappointment over his elimination, he said, as reported by RACER, “Yeah, it burns, it stings, it’s frustrating. But it is what it is. We’ve just been fighting away trying to make our cars better for next year at this point and trying to get as many points as we can. But it hurts knowing you don’t have a chance to win the big trophy, which is always the goal when we start the season.”
Logano pointed out that he and his team are now concentrating on addressing the issues with the cars they had in 2023 and fixing them for the upcoming season to fight for the championship. They are coming up with outside-the-box experiments to solve aerodynamic deficiencies and other issues associated with the car.
“I can’t say it’s really worked yet, but we’re trying different things or at least answering questions that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to answer. We’ll swing at it and try things that are out of our comfort zone. I think that part’s good, and maybe we’ll hit on something that helps us. If not, we got what we got,” Logano said.
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Joey Logano hopes Ford is on the right path going into 2024
With ten Cup race wins and a driver’s championship win, Logano Ford got the car set up right in 2022. But 2023 has been a different story. They so far have won six races, and if not for a surprising surge of RFK, the numbers would’ve been way down.
To fix the uncertainties and the struggle to challenge for wins for the coming season, Ford will be fielding updated Mustangs in 2024, and the entire team is hopeful that they can turn the tides in the upcoming season.
“I’ve seen some details on it; it looks cool. As long as it’s as fast as it looks, we’ll be all right. There are a lot of talks throughout our place and all of Ford teams, I’m sure. Hopefully we made the right decisions. We know which way wasn’t the right way, so we should know what way is the right way now,” Logano said.
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