Joey Logano started 15th and finished 11th in the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion in Sunday afternoon’s Bad Boy Off Road 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. While the day would net a gain of four positions from where the Shell-Pennzoil Ford started, Logano and company had an uphill battle through the first 263 laps. Logano fought the handling of the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford from the drop of the green flag, battling a car that was tight in the center of the turns and loose off resulting in no forward drive. To make matters more difficult, the race is one of the shortest on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule, allowing minimal opportunities to adjust the handling of the car. The race opened with a 124-lap, green-flag run, where Logano found himself one lap down to the leaders. When crew chief Todd Gordon called the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford to the pits for the second time on lap 124, the crew made major adjustments to the car improving the handling substantially. Logano narrowly missed receiving the free pass at lap 167, as another competitor had just been lapped. The team would take the wave around opportunity and join the tail-end of the field for the ensuing restart. Logano would again miss the free pass at lap 241 when the caution flag was displayed, but was finally the beneficiary at lap 265 when the fifth caution of the afternoon came out. Logano would restart from the 19th position and battled forward before the final caution at lap 285. From there, Gordon and the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil crew would make a final pit stop, giving Logano fresh tires for the dash to the finish. Logano rallied forward to finish in the eleventh position, finishing in front of six other Chase competitors. With the finish, Logano remained fifth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Point standings, trailing series point leader and teammate Brad Keselowski by 14 points as the series heads to Dover, Delaware for the first elimination race in the Chase.

“It was a hard fight to say the least with the Shell/Pennzoil Ford. We took off awful, just like we did in the spring race too, it’s crazy. We went down a lap and fought all day and then finally got the lucky dog but not with many laps to make it up. We made our car better, but didn’t have enough time to get ourselves back up to where I thought we were speed-wise at the end. I’m proud of the never-quit-attitude. We’re resilient. We just need to start a little bit faster. We can’t lose that many spots at the beginning of the race and expect to battle back every time. We did what we had to do. We almost got a top 10 out of something that we ran around 20th all day, so at least we got something out of it. We just need to go faster than that.”