Fourth not so fun for Joey Logano at Chicagoland Speedway
Joey Logano finished a quiet fourth in Sunday's Chase for the Sprint Cup opener at Chicagoland Speedway.
As far as the Team Penske driver is concerned, it was a little too quiet.
While Logano was happy to come home in the top five on a day when he hovered around 10th place for much of the afternoon, the Connecticut native wasn't thrilled with the overall speed of his No. 22 Ford Fusion.
"I'm pleased with the finish; I'm not pleased with our performance this weekend," Logano told FOXSports.com on pit road immediately after the race. "We never were fast at any point this whole weekend. We were always slow. We battled hard and made the most out of it,€“ that's for sure. If you'd have told me we'd finish top five after the first run of this thing, I wouldn't have believed you."
When the caution flag waved with 23 laps to go for a Clint Bowyer collision with the Turn 2 wall, Logano was running 12th. While the top eight cars stayed out under caution, Logano and others from ninth on back elected to hit pit road for tires --€“ and the decision to take fresh rubber appeared to help Logano in moving forward several positions once the race restarted with 18 laps to go.
Following another caution -- this one, oddly enough, for a collision between lovebirds Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -- Logano lined up sixth for the final restart with six laps left, and managed to pick off two more spots before the checkered flag waved.
"It was a decent finish after what we went through, but we've got to find more," Logano said. "We've got to figure out how to go faster. That's not good enough. We've got to figure out how to go a little faster to beat these guys."
Logano, who arrived at Chicagoland three points behind his championship-leading teammate Brad Keselowski, now sits 10 points behind Keselowski -- Sunday's winner -- but moved up two positions to third in the standings.
"We've just got to learn from our mistakes and figure out where we missed it this weekend, why we didn't have any speed, and go from there," Logano said. "We're complaining that we didn't run good -- we still finished fourth, so we'll take that, but we've just got to find something somewhere."
Logano was admittedly a bit mystified as to why teammate Keselowski's car, which led three times for a total of 62 laps, was so superior to the No. 22 Penske machine.
"I don't know," Logano said. "If I knew, I wouldn't tell you, and if I knew, my car would be just as fast, too."
VIDEO: Joey Logano talks about his fourth-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway in the opening Chase for the Sprint Cup race