Joey Logano started from the pole and finished 10th in the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion in Sunday afternoon’s Pure Michigan 400 at Michigan International Speedway (MIS). The pole was the second consecutive for Logano, having won the pole and the race when the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series raced at MIS in June. However, Sunday’s race, which featured the final test of the potential 2017 aerodynamic rules package would play out differently than Logano’s previous two pole starts in Brooklyn. Logano led the opening 22 laps before losing the lead on the race’s first restart. The handling of the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion suffered without clean air as Logano began to slowly drop out of the top-five and had to battle to remain in the top-10 for the majority of the event. Despite the struggles, the Shell-Pennzoil crew continued to work on the handling as Logano relayed information to crew chief Todd Gordon. The team made air pressure adjustments on every stop, while making wedge adjustments on two of their five stops. On the team’s final stop at lap 187, the rear air hose got caught by the nose of another car, yanking the gun from the rear-changers hands and sending it down pit road, resulting in a lengthy pit stop. That dropped Logano to the 17th position where he would have to battle back in the closing nine laps to secure his 16th top-10 of 2016.

“We kind of ended on a down note there. I don’t know. We lost our track position early in the race which hurt us and then we got our car balance fixed but it is so hard to pass. To get back up there was challenging. We came back down pit road there at the end to take four and somehow I guess the 4 car hooked our air gun and send the rear air gun flying and we lost time in the pits. We were the last car on the lead lap on that last run and got back to 10th so I am proud of the effort this weekend. The pole was nice we just weren’t as competitive as we were in the spring race. Our car drove the same, everyone just got better.”