During a Tuesday afternoon visit to North Wilkesboro Speedway to discuss and promote next month’s NASCAR All-Star Race, Joey Logano found himself addressing unexpected criticism from former Atlanta Braves star Chipper Jones, as well as reflecting on his recent disagreement with teammate Austin Cindric and subsequent disqualification at Talladega Superspeedway.
Logano learned of Jones’ social media rant, which aggressively denounced the three-time NASCAR champion’s actions during the Jack Link’s 500, during a Tuesday morning appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Jones had been critical of Logano’s team radio transmissions, where he tore into Cindric for going against strategy plans at the end of Stage 2, costing the team a stage victory and points.
“I have no clue” what prompted the backlash, Logano said, noting that he had never met the former big-leaguer. “I found out he really doesn’t like me. So I’m surprised that a professional athlete would act in that manner, because he’s been through it, right? Like, I say it all the time. I am very careful to form an opinion on an athlete by their emotions or the way they play the game, because I know from being in that position, when there’s that much on the line in a competitive environment, you act a certain way, because you’re out there to win, right? And then you’ve got to be able to shut that off. I would have assumed him being the athlete that he is and was that he would understand that and not mouth off on social media like somebody that’s never played the sport before or a sport.”
The disagreement among the Team Penske teammates stemmed from their tactics in the last lap of Stage 2 at Talladega. When Logano shifted his No. 22 Ford up a lane to stall the momentum of race leader Bubba Wallace and form an all-Ford line, Cindric moved a lane higher instead of pushing Logano, disrupting their formation and allowing Wallace to cruise to the stage victory.
Logano acknowledged that he probably shouldn’t have keyed his microphone to air out fiery remarks that became public knowledge instantly, but maintained his perspective on the Stage 2 moves hadn’t changed, even after discussing it with Cindric.
“My perspective is the same, hasn’t changed a bit,” Logano said. “I don’t think TV captured exactly what upset me, and I’m not here to air dirty laundry either or to talk about what our internal rules of going at it on superspeedways are. At this point, you know, there’s sometimes a straw that breaks the camel’s back. May have been at that moment. We’re out there in the heat of battle, and when something that was set to be a certain way doesn’t go the way that we all agreed to, and maybe not the first time, then yeah, you’re going to get a little frustrated about it.”
Despite the disagreement, Logano emphasized the importance of moving forward as teammates. “At this point, we talked, we communicated. We’re still teammates, right? You’re brothers, right? You’re going to sometimes not see eye to eye. Everyone wants to stick up for their side, obviously, but we just have to come to some kind of common ground and move forward, because no matter what, he’s still my brother, right? He’s still my teammate out there. We’ve still got to figure it out, and we will, and we did, right? We went through it all, we talked about it, and, yeah, you move on. So there’s a lot of lessons learned, and we move on.”
Logano also addressed his disqualification after post-race inspection, where officials found an infraction in the rear-spoiler braces. The result would have been his first top-five finish of the season, but instead, he was relegated to last place with a one-point day.
“There’s a lot of bad things that come along with the penalty,” Logano said. “And, you know, Team Penske, we’re not the people that, like, blatantly are going to go out there and cheat. It’s not who we are. It was a mistake that essentially, the nut came off the bolt back there on the brace, and the bowl was still in there, but it does — and I said on the radio show this morning — it does cause a little deflection, I’m sure, in the spoiler. Does it give you a competitive advantage? I’m sure it does a little bit. Did it change where we finished in the race? No, because everyone was locked down two-wide, so it doesn’t make a difference, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s not by the rules, so you’ve got to accept the penalty. And the penalty, I mean, it hurts. There’s no doubt.”
Logano acknowledged the financial impact and the hit to the team’s image, but emphasized the importance of understanding the process that led to the mistake and creating a new process to prevent it from happening again. “All we can do now is just understand the process of how it happened and create a new process to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and then we just move forward. That’s all we can do.”
