Catchfence

The Finish: Joey Logano and the No. 20 Sport Clip Toyota used a late-race push from Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch to go from seventh to first on the final lap of the Subway Jalapeno 250 at Daytona International Speedway, picking up his first NASCAR Nationwide Series win of the 2011 season and the second of the year for the No. 20 Sport Clips Toyota.

The Race Recap: Things were not looking good for Logano to start out the day at Daytona. After being the fastest car in practice on Thursday evening, Logano had clutch issues just as he was about to go out for his qualifying run. The mechanical problem forced the team to work on the car after qualifications and resulted in Logano having to start at the back of the field when the green flag flew. It took just seven laps for Logano to drive from 40th to 15th at the beginning of the event, but the 21-year-old ran into trouble when he spun off the back bumper of JGR teammate Brian Scott in the two-car draft. Logano and the No. 20 Sport Clips team were on a different strategy from there on out, constantly finding themselves at the back of the field and clawing their way back to the front.

At one point, Logano also had to pit to fix a loose wheel, again putting him at the back of the field. However, Logano was able to work with a number of different drivers to race back towards the front. With about 20 laps to go, Logano found teammate Busch and the two began a slow and steady charge forward. Following the last restart with just eight laps to go, Logano and Busch again teamed up and started push to the finish. On the white flag lap, Logano, with pushing help from Busch, grabbed the lead coming out of turn two and held off a charge from several other two-car tandems. The race to the line saw a huge wreck behind Logano, who took the checkers and earned his ninth-career Nationwide Series win and first of the 2011 season.

Joey’s Quotes: “Wow, what a night for the Sport Clips Toyota. Man, it feels so good to finally get back to Victory Lane and of all places to do it, we did it here at Daytona. This is a huge, huge win for me. This is easily the biggest win of my career. I’ve always said you could win a bicycle race here at Daytona and it would be a huge accomplishment. So to be able to call myself a Daytona winner is something that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. We were just talking earlier today about my past on these restrictor plate tracks and having so many finishes where I pushed someone to the win. Now, I’m finally on the other side of the coin and it feels great. I still can’t believe I won here at Daytona.

“I’ve really got to thank Kyle for working with me there at the end. Maybe it was payback for helping push him to the win at Talladega earlier this year. I know he is a guy who wants to win, but he also wants to see our Joe Gibbs Racing team get wins as well. Me and Kyle have always worked really well together on these plate tracks and especially since this two-car racing has started and become so important. It took us a while to find each other in the race, but there with about 20 to go, we finally got hooked up and it was on from there.

That last restart, we talked over our strategy and it worked out just like we had planned. With about two to go, I didn’t think we were going to have enough steam to get up there and challenge for the win, but we just kept digging and everyone was coming back to us. On the last lap, we got the lead and the spotters were talking about a few other cars having a run at us. I was looking in the mirror, looking out the front, looking in my mirror and looking out the front. Kyle moved up to block them and I was moving up to try and block Kyle. I hate that he got into it and we weren’t able to bring home a JGR one-two, but it’s still great to get the victory.

“This gives us a lot of momentum for the rest of the year, especially coming back from all we dealt with today. We had clutch problems in qualifying that could have resulted in us not even making the show since we are a go-or-go-home car now. But we put it in and had to start at the back. Our teammate Brian (Scott) was pushing us early and we got bottled up behind some slower cars and he got into us and turned us around. It wasn’t intentional by any means; just one of those things that happens with this type of racing. I was able to save it, but that put us off on our pit strategy. We also had a wheel loose or something right there about halfway and we had to come in to fix that. We had a lot of things happen to us tonight that could have and should have taken us out of the running. But the guys stuck with it and kept a positive outlook. We never got down because we knew we could go to the front.

“I just can’t explain to everyone what it means to win here at Daytona. This is one of those places that all aspiring racecar drivers dream of racing at and only a select few get to win at. We’ve been close here before. We pushed Junior to the win last year in this race and we were going for the lead here in February and got into an accident, so I thought it might never happen. But we put everything together tonight and here we are in Victory Lane.

This is huge for Joe Gibbs Racing, Sport Clips, Toyota and for myself. Along with our runs last week on the Cup side in Sonoma and winning the West race, this gives me a lot of momentum and momentum means a lot in this sport. I’m also stoked to get a Nationwide Series win with my new crew chief Adam Stevens and all of these guys. I’ve got a lot of guys on this team who have been with me for years in other series, so to celebrate with all of them in Victory Lane here at Daytona is the sweetest thing in my racing career.”

What’s Next: The No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota will return to the track next Friday at Kentucky Speedway for the Feed the Children 300. Logano has won the last three races at Kentucky Speedway in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, all coming from the pole.

- Joe Gibbs Racing Press Release