Joey Logano said Saturday he shares in the responsibility of the No. 22 team being penalized by NASCAR for the webbed glove he wore last weekend.
It was the left-hand glove Logano wore during qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway that cost him $10,000 after being sent to the rear of the field and having to serve a pass-through penalty. NASCAR deemed it was both a safety violation for modifying SFI safety equipment and a competition infraction because it was used to block air through the window net.
The Team Penske driver, however, didn’t admit as to who came up with the idea. But Logano did wear the glove when it was given to him by the team.
“That’s kind of how a lot of things work,” Logano said. “As a driver, you work with the team and hey, I’m going to take a portion of the responsibility of that, too, obviously. I should. I put the glove on. With that said, I didn’t build the glove. I didn’t make it on my own. I can’t sew, so that’s what it was and we had conversations about it.”
Logano will start from the pole Sunday in Las Vegas, his second pole in three weeks. It was a performance that came with a bit of a chip on his shoulder after the events of last week.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1428]
“What I’m proud about as a team is, yeah, that was a tough situation for us. It was hard to go through and embarrassing, for sure,” Logano said. “But the fact [is] that we got through it and just move on and focus on the next week. We showed that we have some speed in our race car and to be able to put it on the pole here, to me, is a statement-type lap, so I’m proud of that.”
NASCAR did not review in-car footage from Daytona and Brad Moran, the Cup Series managing director, said they don’t know if Logano wore the glove for Daytona 500 qualifying. It was a random review of in-car camera footage at Atlanta that caught the webbed glove Logano was wearing. Logano did not comment on whether he wore the glove in Daytona.
Logano even went as far as to deny that wearing the glove made a difference.
“It didn’t do anything to speak of,” he said. “It was directionally an area that everybody goes to try to block that hole. You see everyone put their hand there; we just tried to cover more space.”