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 Roger Penske, the winning team owner called it a "racing accident."
Matt Kenseth, the driver knocked out of the lead within five laps of
a victory crucial to his NASCAR Sprint Cup championship hopes,
called it "kind of risky and not very smart."
So it went in the postmortem after Logano knocked the Toyota of
Kenseth out of the groove to win a second straight Chase race in
Round 2. Kenseth, who led 153 laps and needed a win to advance to
Round 3, now has bleak prospects. He must get that victory at the
unpredictable Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday to keep his title
hopes alive.
Although it was his fifth victory this season, it may be difficult
for Logano to sustain his drive for a first title without a lot of
question marks about how he eliminated a strong contender. Up until
he knocked Kenseth out of the way, the Toyota driver had defeated
Logano's passing efforts in a spirited but clean duel. Twice those
efforts resulted in Logano glancing off the SAFER barriers. But
Kenseth did not do anything worse than beat his adversary to the
fastest groove
Kenseth said he was disappointed given that Logano had already
qualified for Round 3 by a victory in Charlotte and that his Joe
Gibbs Racing Toyota had made no contact with the Ford.
"It's the end of the race and I was trying to stay in front of him
the best I could and I was in front of him," said Kenseth. "I didn't
do anything wrong to him. The race track is 80 or 100 feet wide down
there (in Turn 1) and I was in front of him. He just chose to spin
me out because he wanted to be in the top groove instead of going
left and trying to race me for the win the way a man should do it."
Logano acknowledged he retaliated after Kenseth's blocking
maneuvers, saying he raced Kenseth the same way the Toyota driver
raced him. "I got fenced twice," he said. "I wasn't going to put up
with it."
If Logano was faster - and the better driver - why not set up an
opportunity to prove it in the remaining laps?
Team owner Penske came to Logano's defense by saying the ramming was
not intentional - although Kenseth wasn't accepting that
explanation. Penske said his driver "turned down, Joey did, to take
the lower lane and there was another car up there - I think a slower
car - and then Kenseth came down. Unfortunately, they got together.
I don't like to see that anymore than anybody else does. It's one of
those racing accidents. It's real tough when it's in this kind of a
situation, but there was no question that Kenseth was doing
everything he could to keep Joey from going by."
Logano's ramming had the ring of the ol' Saturday night short track
maxim. If a driver can reach an adversary's rear bumper, goes this
line, it means he is faster. So the trailing driver has the right to
win by rooting his adversary out of the groove. But the action in
Kansas took place on a 1.5-mile speedway at a speed in the 180 mph
range and reaching a rear bumper doesn't mean a driver is
necessarily faster. In the big leagues, catching is one thing and
passing another. The onus is on the trailing driver to make a clean
move.
Would Kenseth have raced another driver differently? Given the Chase
format, that would have been unlikely. The incident spoiled an
outstanding contest - the kind NASCAR and fans had been looking for
under the high-pressure Chase brackets. Going forward, there's the
specter of Kenseth giving Logano a payback later in the Chase to
make sure the Penske driver doesn't win it.
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The incident also brought back the memories of Logano's early days
at Joe Gibbs Racing, where he moved into the Sprint Cup as a
teenager. He constantly had veteran drivers retaliating for what
could be considered "risky and not very smart" passing maneuvers.
After the team and sponsor Home Depot lost confidence in him, his
contract was not renewed and Logano was picked up by Penske's team,
where a pairing with Brad Keselowski and some strong Fords helped
him get a second start on his career, which now includes a Daytona
500 victory.
Among other ironies, it was Kenseth who became the fourth driver on
the Gibbs team under new sponsorship once Logano was let go.
Kenseth, who scored seven victories in his first season with Gibbs,
said he counted himself one of the few veteran drivers who had not
gotten into a spat with Logano during the latter's formative years
and had congratulated the Penske driver on this year's success not
long before Sunday's race began.
"I'm one of the only guys that I think hasn't been into it yet with
Joey and I've always raced him with a ton of respect," said Kenseth.
"I've actually been one of his biggest fans - I'm certainly not
anymore, but I always was."
The other large irony looming concerned the origin of the Chase
itself. When Kenseth won the 2003 championship under the old Latford
system, he scored only one victory and took the title in a Roush
Racing Ford by consistency. During the following winter and the
first months of Kenseth's reign, NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr.
suggested that the sport needed a championship format where fans
believed the winner truly was a champion. It was a message echoed by
the media.
The Chase was born the following season. Kenseth's lifelong dream of
winning a title was soured by getting tagged as the guy who created
the need for a new format. The amiable Wisconsonite disappeared in
favor of a sharper-edged, sardonic wisecracker.
This year, Kenseth appeared to be headed for possible redemption and
his first title under the Chase. But the latest format of three-race
rounds before a title showdown at the Homestead-Miami Speedway
appears to have caught him out. That and the bumper of a Penske
Racing Ford.
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