NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Joey Logano was at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Tuesday (April 29) for the track’s All-Star Weekend preview, just a few days removed from his nightmare weekend at Talladega Superspeedway, in more ways than one.
Logano initially crossed the line in fifth for Sunday’s (April 27) Jack Link’s 500, but he was disqualified after his No. 22 car was found to be missing a spoiler bolt in post-race inspection. Team Penske elected to not appeal the DQ, so Logano was relegated to 39th place for just the fifth last-place result in his illustrious NASCAR Cup Series career.
In a 2025 season where Logano has recorded just a single top-10 finish (an eighth at Martinsville Speedway) in the first 10 races, the DQ was a big hit that effectively cut his points cushion on the playoff cut line in half. He sits 36 points above the cut post penalty, which is not far from the “danger zone” as the regular season nears its halfway point.
“It hurts, right?” Logano said. “It’s a 40-point penalty. That’s the way I look at it. Not to mention the financial impact as well from finishing fifth to [finishing] last, so there’s a pretty big impact there. It’s not ideal by any means.”
And while Logano remarked that the missing bolt probably didn’t have too much of an impact on his finish because of the two-by-two gridlock at the end of the race, he and the team will still have to face the music and take the points hit for the infraction.
“I had the analogy earlier on the [Sirius XM] show, is that [the penalty’s] the same thing as if you were to wreck someone and you say you’re sorry,” Logano said. “It makes it a little bit better, but it doesn’t change the end result. Same thing here. We made a mistake; the nut came off. We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to, but it doesn’t change the result.
“We still have to own up to what happened there. All we can do now is just understand the process of how it happens and create a new process to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and then we just move forward. That’s all we can do.”
But the Talladega DQ wasn’t the only source of controversy for Logano on Sunday.
On the final lap of stage two, Logano was racing Bubba Wallace for the green-and-white checkered flag and the playoff point that came with it. Logano made a move to the top lane as the field entered the trioval and expected Team Penske teammate Austin Cindric to help push him to the stripe. Cindric, however, had to lift and abandoned the No. 22 car by moving to the top lane. That allowed Wallace to win the stage, and Logano keyed his radio to let his frustration be known with a profanity-laced rant against his teammate.
Cindric — who went on to win the race — understood Logano’s frustration in his post-race press conference. He also explained that he was trying to avoid causing a crash by running into the back of Logano or getting hit from behind by another car.
Logano’s comments spread far and wide on social media, and he even attracted an unlikely critic: Baseball Hall of Famer and Atlanta Braves legend Chipper Jones.
“Some people are, ‘Hooray for our team as long as I’m the star,’ as every team has them. Hendrick, RCR, JGR, Penske, etc. Sometimes karma is glorious. Enjoy this one! In case anyone is confused, lemme be clear…. @joeylogano,” the rest of Jones’ post read.
Logano, who had never met or interacted with Jones before, was surprised by his reaction when asked about it.
“I’m surprised that a professional athlete would act in that manner, because he’s been through it,” Logano said. “I am very careful to form an opinion on an athlete by their emotions or the way to play the game. Because I know from being in that position, when there’s that much on the line in a competitive environment, you act a certain way because you’re out there to win.
“… I would’ve assumed with him being the athlete that he is and was, that he would understand that and not mouth off on social media like someone who’s never played a sport. It’s surprising to me.”
In regard to his frustration with Cindric, Logano remained steadfast in his opinion on the stage two ending.
“My perspective is the same; it hasn’t changed one bit,” Logano said. “I don’t think TV captured exactly what upset me, and I’m not here to air dirty laundry or to talk about our internal rules of going at it on superspeedways. At this point, there’s sometimes a straw that breaks the camel’s back, and that may have been at that moment, right?
“We’re out there in the heat of battle, and when something that was set to be a certain way doesn’t go the way that we all agreed to, you’re going to get a little frustrated about it.”
But while Logano and Cindric may agree to disagree on what happened, the two put the incident behind them as any pair of teammates would.
“At this point we talked, we communicated,” Logano said. “We’re still teammates, right? We’re brothers. You’re sometimes not going to sometimes see eye to eye. Everyone wants to stick up for their side, but we just have to come to some kind of common ground and move forward. … We went through it all. We talked about it, and you move on.”
With the weekend — and 2025 season as a whole — that Logano’s endured, moving on to the next race and beyond is about the only thing he can do.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf