Though he has yet to be officially eliminated from the playoffs, Joey Logano gave a review of his disappointing 2023 season after being knocked out at Bristol by a midrace wreck.
“You don’t want to wish misfortune on people for your own good, but it’s kind of our only hope at the moment,” Logano told reporters. “It’s what happens. You don’t go fast enough, you’re in the back and they wreck in front of you at Bristol on a restart and you’re going so fast that you can’t whoa up or turn or do anything and you get kind of pile drove into the wreck. It’s our own fault.”
The defending Cup Series champion has only one victory in the first 29 races this year.
Did the race feel like the same uphill battle as his season?
“Yeah. I haven’t really felt like we’ve made any big gains that we need to, and unfortunately it seems like it’s at every track,” he said. “Typically you may say, ‘Oh, we’re off on a mile-and-a-half, but our short tracks are OK or your road courses are OK.’ It just seems like we’re off everywhere right now, so we’ll see what happens here the rest of the race and if we get knocked out it gives us a few races to swing big and try to figure it out for next year.
“That’s about where we’re at, so we’ll wait anxiously. I keep watching the TV behind you. I’m pretty distracted at the moment, but it is what it is. We just move forward from here.”
WIth 80 laps remaining, Logano currently would be the first driver to be eliminated, five points behind Bubba Wallace. Barring major trouble for Wallace or another playoff driver such as Martin Truex Jr. or Ross Chastain, he likely will be unable to defend his title.
