Daytona 500 Notebook

Feb. 22, 2015

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

Teammates’ engine failures didn’t worry Logano’s crew chief

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano might have been sitting on a powder keg, but crew chief Todd Gordon wasn’t about to worry about it.

On Lap 161 in Sunday’s 57th running of the Great American Race, the engine in the No. 2 Team Penske Ford of Brad Keselowski exploded.

Fifteen laps later, Ryan Blaney’s engine did the same thing. Under the circumstances, Logano might have had misgivings about his own power plant, given that the failures had just taken a teammate and an affiliated car out of the race.

“I just asked Todd, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’” Logano said. “When he said there was nothing I could do, I stopped worrying about it.”

Gordon also took a pragmatic approach.

“You worry about the things you can control in this sport,” Gordon said. “At that point, we have no control over it. I think (engine builder) Doug Yates and his guys have done an awesome job of trying to bring as much power to the race track. We had had discussions prior to the race about where we could push it, where we couldn’t.

“Unfortunate with the 2 and the 21 (Blaney). But we had managed where we needed to be with our motor all day. You can’t worry about things you can’t control. At that point, as Joey said, it’s in the racing gods’ hands. Fortunately everything worked out for us.”

A further testament to the strength of Logano’s engine was his celebratory burnout.

“It held together ’cause I was trying to sling it right out the side of that thing, doing burn outs and laying it up,” Logano quipped. “But she held out. A lot stronger than you think. A pretty tough motor in that thing.”

JOHNSON SEES VICTORY SLIP AWAY

For Jimmie Johnson, hopes of winning a third Daytona 500 failed to materialize as the six-time champion thought they might.

Heading for the two-lap overtime shootout that decided NASCAR’s most prestigious race, Johnson lined up on the inside of front row next to leader Joey Logano, who had picked the outside lane for the final restart.

Denny Hamlin was third, lined up behind Johnson, but the inside line didn’t move, and Logano pulled out to the lead with help behind him. When NASCAR called a caution on Lap 203 because of a wreck on the backstretch, Logano was the winner.

“With about 10 to go, I thought we were in position to win the Daytona 500,” Johnson said after the race. “I wish we were in Victory Lane right now, but with plate racing, you honestly have no clue what’s going to happen. Our line just did not go on the restart at the end. I looked up in the mirror at a big gap and knew we were in trouble, especially with the outside line as tight as they were to one another.

“Really, the last two restarts just didn’t work for us. I was ahead of one lane, and the guys behind us just weren’t bumper to bumper. Then, on the last restart, the same thing on the bottom. So it’s just the way things happened.”

CONTINGENCY PLANS

Now that the Daytona 500 is history, and Matt Crafton brought home an 18th-place finish in an emergency relief role for injured Kyle Busch, Joe Gibbs Racing will have to turn its attention to the future.

Busch suffered a broken right leg and a broken left foot after his No. 54 Toyota slammed nose-first into a concrete wall inside Turn 1 during Saturday’s XFINITY Series race. Unknown at this point is the number of races Busch will miss as he recovers from his injuries.

Whether Crafton races again in the No. 18 Toyota as Busch mends, he’s due a vote of thanks from JGR for an excellent effort under exigent circumstances. Crafton flew back down to Daytona on Saturday night and started the Daytona 500 without the chance to run a single practice lap.

“Pretty gnarly,” Crafton said of the experience. “It was very, very tough, but that’s what we get paid to do, drive race cars and figure it out quick…

“It was a learning curve. The first half (of the race) we just rode around and tried to learn, learn, learn. I made a mistake. I had a pretty good surge up top, and I tried the bottom and shuffled myself all the way to the back. I should have had a little better finish there at the end, but it is what it is.”

Images Courtesy: NASCAR/Getty Images