Joey Logano and the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion came up just short of giving team owner Roger Penske his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, finishing second in Sunday’s Brickyard 400. Logano started the race from the second position and jumped to the lead at the green flag with a great start. Logano led the first 11 laps before having to allow the second-place car of Carl Edwards pass him due to a large piece of trash on the grill and rising engine temperatures. Once in second, Logano was able to get behind Edwards and suck the piece of trash off his grill, but slipped back to fourth. Logano and crew chief Todd Gordon would stick to their pre-race pit strategy as the field jumbled with a number of different pit calls. At one point, Logano would slip as far back as 18th during green-flag pit stops, but always raced his way back to the front, taking the lead again on lap 46. Logano would lead for 28 laps on the day. Late in the event, Logano used a number of strong restarts to power his way to the second position. On the second attempt at a green-white-checkered finish, Logano started outside of race leader Kyle Busch. Logano got another good restart and raced side-by-side with Busch, but a bump from the third place car allowed Busch to pull ahead. Logano would slot into second place, his best career finish at Indianapolis. It was Logano’s 12th top-five finish of the season and his sixth in the last seven races. He remains second in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings, 69 points behind leader Kevin Harvick.

“I got a good draft down the backstretch and I knew (Kyle) was gonna block the bottom. I didn’t have a good enough run to get underneath him. All I could do was hope he missed his corner and try to get underneath him that way. I think he showed all day he was the best car, just working the strategy and it worked out good for them. We just didn’t have enough. I tried to make some runs and tried to have a good restart there at the end, which we did, but the 78 was there to push him ahead. I tried to do everything I could do. When you come here to the Brickyard all you want to do is win and that’s it. It’s either win or finish last in my eyes. That’s all that matters when you come to a race track like this. Second hurts, but I’m proud of this team. We worked hard throughout this whole weekend. We didn’t unload very good, but pushed hard and qualified second and finished second, but there are no trophies for second.”