Takeaways from Daytona: Joey Logano 'surprised' Michael McDowell didn't give him late push
DAYTONA BEACH, Florida — Could Joey Logano have won the Daytona 500 if he would have gotten some more help from Michael McDowell? Probably not. But the question is still a valid one.
McDowell and Logano were the only two Fords remaining at the end of a demolition derby Daytona 500 Sunday night. With Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch on the front row for the final two-lap restart, teaming up to get to the front was probably their best shot.
Logano got to second on the final lap and split the two Gibbs Toyotas. But as Busch fought back on the outside entering turn 3, McDowell decided to go with him instead of stick with Logano. That left the door open for Erik Jones to sneak into third.
“When Kyle got a great run down the backstretch, there was no blocking that move,” Logano said. “We were going to crash if I was going to try to block that one, so I had to let that one go. And I thought with the blue oval behind him that the Ford would come with me.”
“It’s kind of the choices that you have to make, and you have a split‑second decision on all that. And typically you kind of expect manufacturers to work together like the Toyotas do or the Chevys do, and just was expecting that, as well, in that moment coming to the checkered flag. I was very surprised by his decision.”
McDowell said he was hoping that Busch and Hamlin would collide as they raced to the checkered flag and he could somehow end up with a win.
“We were trying like heck, but so was everybody else,” McDowell said. “When [Busch] shot to the outside there he had a big run, a lot of momentum and I tried to go with him to hope that [Busch] and [Hamlin] would get together and maybe I’d sneak a win out of it. It just didn’t work out.”
Logano finished fourth and McDowell finished fifth. It’s just the second top-five finish for McDowell in 285 Cup Series starts. His best finish is a fourth-place run in the 2017 July race at Daytona.
What in the world happened with that pit stop crash?
While the 2019 Daytona 500 will be remembered for all the crashes at the end of the race as drivers jockeyed for position near the front of the field, the craziest crash happened as the first pit stops of the final stage began.
Cody Ware, driving for his father Rick Ware’s backmarker team, got into teammate B.J. McLeod as drivers ahead of them were slowing down to head to pit road. The two cars then went sliding toward the pitting cars and Ware took out Jimmie Johnson and Tyler Reddick as McLeod went sliding through the grass.
If you watch the video closely you can see how Ware hooks McLeod. Did he not know drivers were pitting ahead of him? Did he not know what to do? Ware was making just his 10th Cup race start and has never finished fewer than six laps down in a Cup Series race.
Jimmie Johnson still finishes 9th
Despite sustaining a ton of damage from Ware’s wreck with McLeod, Johnson ended up with a top 10.
“Yeah, I’ve never been hit like that on pit lane,” Johnson said. “That was the start of the craziness. I don’t know if that kept us out of trouble and got us a good finish or what, but certainly not something that we were anticipating.”
Johnson brings up a good point. He was two laps down at one point but got the laps back because of the craziness that ensued in the race’s final laps and was out of trouble at the back of the pack. Perhaps he would have been caught up in one of the crashes if he wasn’t taken out by Ware.
Kyle Larson also finished seventh after being involved in three incidents, including one where he spun on his own due to a flat tire.
“I got a tire rub and blew a left-rear and crashed,” Larson said. “The second time me and [Ricky] Stenhouse got together and I wrecked. The third time, I got on the brakes really hard and spun and about crashed. My car is super beat up so to come away with a top 10 is pretty cool.”
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter
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