{"id":13805,"date":"2023-02-20T14:00:15","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T19:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=13805"},"modified":"2023-02-20T09:32:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T14:32:07","slug":"joey-logano-second-is-worst-nascar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/02\/20\/joey-logano-second-is-worst-nascar\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Joey Logano ‘Second is the worst’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joey Logano<\/strong> climbed out of his car, while thunderous applause broke out a few hundred yards away. Only it wasn’t for him, but rather\u00a0Ricky Stenhouse Jr.<\/strong> Who just minutes earlier snapped a 199-race winless streak to win the Daytona 500<\/a>. Logano, however, finished second. Coming to the white flag, the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion<\/a> rode a push from\u00a0Kyle Busch<\/strong> around the outside of Stenhouse and\u00a0Kyle Larson<\/strong> to the lead.<\/p>\n

“Second is the worst, man. You\u2019re so close. I knew if I went to the bottom, my car didn\u2019t handle good enough,” he said. “I already got pushed off the bottom once and I thought, if I go down there I\u2019m probably going to get wrecked, and I don\u2019t know if I can get down there in time to throw the block and so I didn\u2019t want to wreck my car either.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The gambit worked. He completed the overtake in Turn 1 and just needed to survive another two miles to score his second Harley J. Earl Trophy. That, or a timely caution. He got neither.<\/p>\n

Victory within his grasp<\/h3>\n

A few seconds after taking the lead,\u00a0Aric Almirola<\/strong> loosened\u00a0Travis Pastrana<\/strong>, who turned down into Larson, hooked him into the outside wall, and triggered a multi-car, race-ending caution. But as long as Joey Logano was ahead of everybody else at the moment of caution…and you know where this story goes.<\/p>\n

He trailed Stenhouse when the caution flew. Thus, race over. Stenhouse channeled his inner Helio Castroneves and climbed the catchfence in celebration. Though he went a step further and did a few pull-ups, while in the air. Then he took his car with an empty fuel tank to victory lane and lifted the Harley Earl Trophy for himself.<\/p>\n

Of course, Logano knows what it’s like to win the Daytona 500, as he did in 2015.<\/p>\n

“Congratulations to Ricky. There\u2019s nothing like winning the Daytona 500. That\u2019s why it stings so much finishing second.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not to add salt to the wound, but his runner-up means the drought of Duel winners to win that season’s Daytona 500 extends to an 11-year run. At the end of the day, however, there’s a silver lining. Thanks to his Duel victory, Thursday, Logano leaves Daytona International Speedway<\/a> as the points leader.<\/p>\n

While that ultimately means little when the playoffs start, it’s not a bad way to kick off a title defense.<\/p>\n

Featured Image Credit: Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joey Logano climbed out of his car, while thunderous applause broke out a few hundred yards away. Only it wasn’t for him, but rather\u00a0Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Who just minutes earlier snapped a 199-race winless streak to win the Daytona 500. Logano, however, finished second. Coming to the white flag, the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":13813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,1664],"tags":[502,429,242,1270],"class_list":["post-13805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","tag-daytona-500","tag-daytona-international-speedway","tag-joey-logano","tag-speedweeks"],"modified_by":"Nathan Reynolds","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}