Denny Hamlin believes that Joey Logano‘s ability to run slow on Sunday helped Logano win his first Cup Series race of the year. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin talked about Logano winning while nearly running out of fuel.
“He had a lot of benefits, and this is one of the few benefits of running slow in the course of that last run,” Hamlin said. “You’re just back there and he’s fighting for 15th or whatever, he was going to finish before this all happened. You have to do a good job of saving as well. We don’t know if his crew chief gave him information throughout the race to say when they’re in the spot, hey save me some in case we got green-white checkers.
“…It doesn’t take much, and you can save a gallon or so pretty easily. Everyone’s fuel saves may be a little different under caution, so there’s ways that this happened, and it all just lined up perfectly for him.”
Joey Logano talks about getting a huge win at Nashville
While speaking to reporters after the race, Logano talked about how he won despite being low on fuel and racing extra laps due to five overtimes. “Yeah, this one just takes the whole crew to do it,” Logano said. “When you think about the engine itself with Roush Yates, building the engine, obviously they can make some good mileage; Nick Hensley, our gas man, packing that thing full, that was key; Paul having the cojones to leave me out there, big. Our engineers calculating everything.
“I don’t think we felt too good about it as far as the last restart. I felt good when we came off of 4 and was able to clear Briscoe. I thought, okay, I was in good shape. Going to take the white off of 4 and then they threw the caution. I still don’t know what the caution was for.”
Logano added: “Then we had to do it again. Had to not only do the fuel mileage piece of it, but also you had Reddick with tires there at the end, and he was able to make some pretty big moves, and going down the backstretch it started stumbling. I was like, oh, no. Was able to throw a nice block on him, but even off of 4, it stumbled and stumbled, and then it kind of got like a quick little bit of gas, I guess, and it kind of gave me a little squirt and then started stumbling again across the line and just couldn’t get to the line quick enough. If that start-finish line was into 1, we don’t win the race; we finish third or fourth.”
