Yahoo Autos NASCAR’s towing operation ‘just doesn’t make any sense’ to Logano
Joey Logano wants NASCAR to find a better way of getting a car back to pit road when they are stuck on four flat tires as he was Sunday at Pocono Raceway.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Logano said. “We’ve been fighting these cars for two years now with four flat tires when a car spins out and you get this long, horrible ride back. It’s rough. Your head is bouncing around in there.
“It’s stupid. It’s just really dumb that we can’t just put four tires on a truck.”
The incident happened on lap 36 when the field went into Turn 1 to start the second stage. Logano, who had won the first stage, was cycled to mid-pack as the field was split on strategy and the No. 22 team pitted after the stage. Logano was tagged from behind when he tried to take a run through the center.
He spun to the outside wall, hitting on the driver’s side. In the process, all four tires went flat and the safety crews initially tried to push Logano around the track. The Next Gen car, however, becomes stuck on the track with four flat tires, and Logano needed to be towed back to pit road and in the process, lost multiple laps.
It was when his Ford Mustang was drug from Turn 1 to pit road that Logano felt the most damage was done. He was forced to exit the race after not meeting the minimum speed.
“If we can put four tires on one of (the tow trucks) with a jack and an impact that can just change the tires and let us come back, instead of dragging the car two miles around the racetrack… It’s just stupid,” Logano said. “It’s not fun for anybody — the poor guy driving the tow truck, the poor driver getting his head knocked around for two miles, and the poor team that’s got to fix the underbodies of these things after they get dragged around…
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“It’s dumb. I don’t know. It is what it is, but it seems like it has a very easy fix. I’ve brought this up before, but I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Logano finished 35th, the second driver out of the race. He retired a few laps after Daniel Suarez was forced to do so after also being caught up in the same incident.
Even if Logano was able to get four new tires on his car to drive back to pit road, he doesn’t believe he would have stayed in the race. While being drug around didn’t help, the damage was already done from hitting the wall. Getting Logano off the track quicker would have saved the field from wasting laps and Logano getting rocked around in the car.
“Here’s the deal — I talked to someone today and they (the track crew) see a race car once a year,” Logano said. “That’s not fair to the people working out there on the racetrack that they don’t have a lot of experience. They may be doing it for years, so don’t put it in the context that these guys don’t know what they’re doing, but the experience level of doing something every single week versus seeing a race car once a year is tough.
“That’s really hard and we’re all in a position out there while I’m sitting there watching cars go by me with a chance of getting a good finish being left as I’m trying to communicate to somebody and they can’t hear me, or listen, or they’re trying to figure out what to do. They don’t know that you can’t push a car with four flat tires on it. The car doesn’t steer. I’m trying to tell them to hook it up and they kept trying to push me. We wasted a lap-and-a-half before they tried to hook it. There’s a better way to do it.”
