Bob Pockrass
FOX Motorsports Insider
Joey Logano thought he had only stirred up a little storm with teammate Austin Cindric when Logano went on an expletive-laden rant on his in-car radio following the second stage at Talladega Superspeedway.
Little did he know, the noise would include baseball Hall of Famer Chipper Jones.
However, there’s only one of the two he cares about, and that’s Cindric. Logano is probably wondering why Jones hates him, but he can’t really sweat that.
So what happened on Sunday?
Joey Logano on the big wreck and why he didn’t have fun at Talladega
Cindric pushed Bubba Wallace to the stage win. It resulted in a Logano rant (not all the expletives are the same word) to his team on their in-car radio:
“Way to [expletive] go. What a stupid [expletive]. God. He just gave it to him. Gave a Toyota a stage win. Way to go. That dumb[expletive]. … Put that in his freaking notes and text it to us.”
After winning the race, Cindric said he understood Logano’s frustration.
“I felt like I kind of just got pinched, was trying not to wreck the cars in front of me, including Joey,” Cindric said. “It was a messy end of the stage … between myself, the 21[of Josh Berry]. Joey could have probably done better. We let one slip there.
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“I can understand his frustration without kind of seeing the whole picture. These are the types of things that when you’re expecting someone to have your best interest, those are the challenges, right? We have a lot of meetings centered around that. I feel like it requires constant maintenance. It’s not always pretty. The conversations aren’t always easy.”
Logano, speaking on SiriusXM’s NASCAR channel Tuesday, said they had their conversation and moved on. He felt that the team rules were not followed and that it wasn’t Cindric’s first offense.
“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he told the network. “And, yeah, I lit up pretty quickly. Because I care.”
But what about Jones?
After the race, Jones posted on X:
Jones later celebrated Logano’s disqualification from a fifth-place finish because of a technical violation.
Logano told SiriusXM that he wouldn’t comment on another athlete because he doesn’t know what they are going through.
“Has Chipper Jones ever driven a race car at Talladega?” Logano asked. “That would be my first question. I’m pretty certain he hasn’t. That’s like me saying something about baseball.
“I know nothing about baseball. That’s like me saying something that he did in baseball that was wrong. It doesn’t matter. You care about what people say, their opinion, if you really know them and they know you and they understand the scenario and the situation.”
Jones does know racing.
He grew up about 20 miles from Daytona Beach and has attended several races over the years. He knows sports and certainly has an opinion on words having consequences.
Logano is a likable guy outside the race car. However, he admits he’s a different person inside the race car, and he’s not the only driver who seems to have a different persona once the helmet goes on. Some people don’t mind that but some feel that Logano goes over the line.
The last big controversy for Logano was ripping Austin Dillon after the 2024 Richmond race. And if I had to guess, Jones probably sided with Dillon. Or at the very least felt the critical comments from Logano weren’t warranted. But that’s a total guess.
Jones, though, certainly didn’t say anything that other fans who dislike Logano haven’t said in the past. And Logano admitted he could have toned it down and saved himself a little bit of controversy, but the conversations with Cindric were going to happen regardless.
So how does Logano move on?
Easy. He’s in his 17th year of Cup racing. This won’t faze him one bit. It will cost him some fans but that won’t stress him out. What’s stressing him out is being 11th in the standings and still looking for his first top five this year.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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