Joey Logano and the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil team had a top-five car for most of the afternoon, but had to pit under green late in the race and got trapped a lap down, eventually coming home with an 18th-place finish in the Good Sam 500 on Sunday afternoon at Phoenix International Raceway. Logano started the race from the ninth position and raced into the top five by lap 15. The Shell-Pennzoil pit crew was on point early, picking up several spots in the pits after each stop and keeping Logano solidly in the top-five. Logano fought a car that needed turn and drive off for most of the day, but was still able to keep the car in the top five through the middle portions of the event. Unfortunately, on lap 227, the team did not get the car full of fuel during what would have been the final stop of the day, leaving Logano about 15 laps short of making it to the end. Logano stayed out as long as he could, but had to come to pit road with less than 10 laps to go, giving up his eighth-place position. The unscheduled stop put Logano one lap off the pace and relegated him to an 18th-place finish at the end. Logano slipped back three spots in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings and is seventh, 27 points behind leader Kevin Harvick.

“We just didn’t quite get the luck on our side today. We created our own luck as well. We need to clean it up a little bit. We need to clean up the mistakes we have had here at the beginning of the season on everybody’s front. We still have speed. We were close today. At times it felt like we were a third place Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion and we were running up there around third. We just still have work to do to catch the 4 and 19, they were the class of the field.”