Joey Logano struggled with a very loose Discount Tire Ford Mustang, but made up several position on the final restart and finished third on Saturday afternoon in the Kansas Lottery 300 at Kansas Speedway. Logano started the 200-lap event in the 10th position and raced to eighth, but early on noted that his No. 22 Discount Tire Mustang was very loose, especially on entry. Crew chief Greg Erwin made changes all afternoon long, but nothing seemed to bring the Discount Tire Ford to life as the loose condition would plague the No. 22 team all afternoon. Logano would race as high as second, but as the runs went on, Logano would slip back, running as low as ninth during green-flag portions of the race. Despite the persistent loose condition, Logano was able to race hard and keep his car in contention. Late in the race, Logano would race his way from 13th to sixth after taking four tires on the final pit stop when several other of the front runners took two. A late-race caution set up a green-white-checkered finish and Logano, starting sixth in the outside line, got a great restart and raced his way to third over the final two-lap sprint, earning his eighth top-five finish in 11 NASCAR XFINITY Series races. The No. 22 team now leads the NXS Owners’ Championship point standings by 81 points over the No. 54 of Joe Gibbs Racing with just three races left.

“We were not that good today. I don’t think there’s any way to put it any better than that. We were a seventh or eighth-place car and that was it. We never had any speed, so taking a third-place out of today is what we’ve got to do. That’s good for the owners’ championship. We’ve got a nice cushion and we need to continue keeping a decent-sized cushion like we did today. We gained some on the 60 and lost some on the 54, but overall that’s what we had to do. We really just want to win. We raced really hard and restarted sixth at the end and I was able to get three real quick, but that was kind of it.”