The Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis looked like it was going to be Joey Logano’s race; he had the pace, and the car handling and strategy were seemingly working in his favor. But a late-race stroke of bad luck with the script—a flat right rear tire under Green stole his shot at a first Indianapolis crown. At that point, Logano looked poised to take the win before the puncture derailed the bid.
Now, Logano has opened up about the chaos unfolding in that moment. He described how nothing in the cockpit felt right, recounting an almost comic search for a spark as systems failed. The 2024 Cup Champion did find some ground again but lost it in an eventual crash.
Joey Logano admits to pressing every button to restart the car
Joey Logano’s 2025 season to date has been defined by inconsistency. With one win at Texas securing his playoff berth, he’s managed only two top-five finishes and just five trips to the top 10 and 22 starts. His average finish currently sits at a modeled 17.7, one of the worst marks among playoff-caliber drivers.
Adding insult to injury after 3 DNFs this season, most notably a 35th-place crash at the Daytona 500, a rare early exit for the former champion, and a disqualification after Talladega due to a technical inspection failure. That string of early troubles has undercut his ability to string together momentum and has dragged his season averages down.
At Indianapolis, Logano started strong and led laps during the closing stages, a legitimate contender for the win. But with just 25 laps remaining, his right-rear tire blew under green, sending him from control of the race to diagnosis mode. He had run the majority of the race within the top five, leading a handful of circuits before the flat turned victory hopes upside down.
Speaking to SiriusXM Radio, Joey Logano described what went wrong. He humorously noted, “I think… can’t crank it, can’t nothing. I’m like, huh, it’s off, like everything’s off. And so I’m like, what do you do when nothing works? You just start—I mean, I don’t know—eventually, once you start going through the cycle of stuff, and you just hit all the switches, what do you do next? You start hitting things. I’m hitting something, like, you know, it’s like when your computer doesn’t work, you just give it a smack sometimes, and it might come back to life. Well, golly, it did—oh, I’m back.”
The Team Penske driver recounted on-air puzzlement assist team pushed him beyond two allowed pit boxes and then departed, leaving him stranded. Meanwhile, Logano continued toggling every button inside, trying to reset the car’s systems, all before a flat tire erased any chance of a comeback. That sounds like a likely brickyard when it quickly spirals into a flat tire and crash combo.
He added, “And then it came back to life. And then we did all that just to go back out there and rip the right front off it in the next crash. It went from, holy cow, we’re going to win the Brickyard 400; things are going great, to flat tire, can’t start, crash the car. Just like, what the hell is going on over here? Oh, my God. Want to get away? Golly, what a year!”
With Joey Logano completing his 600th start at Dover, many fans are worried about his Cinderella championship hopes and fourth title. But Iowa is another proving ground, and hopefully the No. 22 driver can change things around. However, there is one strong believer, a veteran who seems to be Logano’s well-wisher.
Kevin Harvick believes Logano has what it takes to regain his momentum
Joey Logano has found himself in a rough patch lately, but Kevin Harvick believes there is still time for the reigning Cup champion to regain momentum before the playoffs. On his Happy Hour podcast, Harvick compared Logano’s current standing to where he was a year ago, pointing out some clear differences. The 2014 Cup Champion went on to say, “They’re definitely not in a position that they were last year from a speed standpoint, handling, all things above. They were much more in tune with the performance last year than they are this year.”
Harvick went on to assess Logano’s recent outing at the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, saying that the No. 22 Ford “ was kind of a tail end of the top-10 car,” while acknowledging that the race itself played out that way. Still, Harvick remains optimistic that Logano, along with drivers like Josh Berry and Austin Cindric, could perform well at Iowa, the next stop on the Cup schedule. It’s a vote of confidence the Team Penske driver could use, given how things have looked lately.
In the last eight races, Logano has cracked the top 10 just once, with a ninth-place finish at Sonoma. Despite the slump, he has locked into the postseason thanks to his victory at Texas earlier this year. The numbers, though, tell the story of his struggles: just five top 10 finishes all season and only two top fives, a noticeable dip from his usual standards.
By this time last year, Logano had already stacked up one win and seven top 10s, heading into the playoffs, and then stormed through the postseason with wins at Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Phoenix to clinch the championship. And now, as the playoff field tightens, Logano may have secured his spot in the playoffs, but not getting eliminated in the first round is extremely crucial, and all eyes will be on Logano to see if he can repeat the magic of 2024 this year.
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