In case you can’t get enough of this topic, Joey Logano came into the Phoenix Raceway media center Friday afternoon for a scheduled session. Naturally, most of the questions were about the fight.
Here are some of the highlights:
— On what he and Busch discussed during their Friday morning meeting with NASCAR: “I told him that we obviously made contact on the back straightaway. I had a not-very-good entry and had to slow down the car a lot to stay on the bottom and tried to make up some of that speed at the bottom of the racetrack and then I got loose. Once you get loose once, then I was on his door. You get loose again and at that point that was it. That is my mistake.
“The fact of the matter is I tried to stay on the bottom, I made a mistake and got up into him. I hate that it happened. I would take it back in a heartbeat. He asked for data when we talked on the phone (during the week) and I was able to bring that with me and present that and try to explain what was going on inside my race car.”
— On whether he got through to Busch: “Time will tell. I guess your actions on the racetrack are what speaks the loudest a lot of times. I believe so. I tried to be as open and honest and be an open book. There are no secrets. Hopefully that helped.”
— On whether it was intentional: “We were racing to the checkered flag and I have no reason to do anything on purpose for fourth place. That makes no sense. We were racing hard for position and the car got loose.”
— On whether he’s OK with Busch not being penalized: “Of course. I don’t see where there should have been a fine for anything. I didn’t see anything wrong.”
— On his insistence he didn’t get punched in the face: “I have ninja moves man! I slipped. … I can say that I didn’t feel anything (if Busch did connect). It sure didn’t hurt.”
As for Busch’s side of all this? Well, so far all we’ve gotten is “Everything is great!”
This is the very first time I have ever heard of a driver bringing data from the car to a woodshed meeting to defend himself…….I didn’t know it was possible. There was some discussion in the broadcasting booth about it, but those guys thought it was stupid. Then they found out the Kyle had ASKED to see the data…..that changed their minds about the stupidity of bringing it. Didn’t seem stupid to me. I found it fascinating. I bet it happens again……….Although, I was surprised Joey didn’t tell Kyle to Go F&%* himself for not believing Joey.
Joey is to nice, and everybody who starts a beef with him and huff and puffs their chest out with hypocritical indignation, knows it!
I’m tired of this whole mess. Last year, a Gibbs driver (Edwards) knocked Logano out of a championship with very aggressive racing. It was handled with respect and class from both drivers as I recall. Now Kyle slams into Joey on the backstretch, and yes he “slammed” into him. Then he wants to fight because the 22 gets back into him? Also, Matt carries The 20 to the apron in ’15 then get mad when Joey makes his own lane so he wrecks him at Martinsville taking out of that championship. Coach Gibbs is a class act, but his drivers are quite lacking in that department. At least 2 of them.