Rookie Logano struggles in his first 500
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Joey Logano wasn't trying to make history. The 18-year-old budding NASCAR star just wanted to get through his first Daytona 500 in one piece.
Instead, Logano ended up learning one more painful lesson in a week full of them.
Logano wrecked his No. 20 Toyota on lap 80 on Sunday at Daytona International Speedway after getting tangled up with Scott Speed and Clint Bowyer, sending Logano sliding into the inside wall and last place in the 43-car field.
The rookie, nicknamed "Sliced Bread" because of his precocious talent, started ninth but spent most of the day running a little off the pace, simply trying to get some experience and earn his peers' respect.
Logano refused to blame Speed for starting the accident but could not hide his disappointment.
"I don't think I should say what I'm feeling inside. I'm not happy, that's for sure," Logano said. "We were just getting going. And we got a couple pit stops under our belt, started coming to the front a little bit and made a few more adjustments."
He will have to make one more: learning how to bounce back from adversity.
"This place takes awhile to figure out," said Joe Gibbs Racing president J.D. Gibbs. "He'll be fine. The frustrating thing was, and we just talked about it, 'Finish it, just finish it.' That's all he was trying to do, and a lot of stuff happens around here out of your control."
Hendrick woes again: NASCAR's super team didn't exactly get off to a super start. Again.
None of Hendrick Motorsport's drivers - Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin - were a major factor at Daytona for the second straight year.
No Hendrick car placed in the top 10, with Gordon's 13th-place the best of the bunch. Martin faded from the outside pole to 16th, Earnhardt was 27th and three-time defending series champion Johnson was 31st.
It wasn't exactly the performance expected out of NASCAR's highest-profile team.
Gordon led 14 laps during the middle of the race before tire problems forced him to pit. He dropped all the way to 32nd before scrambling back into the top 15 but ran out of time.
Martin, a sentimental favorite after a couple of near misses in the 500, never got going. He led one lap but floated between fifth and 13th for long stretches before dropping back late, making him 0-for-25 in the season opener.
Earnhardt had a good car but was his own worst enemy. He missed his pit stall during one caution and incurred a penalty for parking over the stall boundary during another. His day got even worse when he later started a nine-car pileup after getting into it with Brian Vickers.
Johnson narrowly avoided disaster during the big wreck, but his No. 48 car spent almost the entire day outside the top 10.
Pole-sitter falters: Pole-sitter Martin Truex Jr. dropped to the track apron on the pace lap. Maybe that should have been a sign of things to come.
Although Truex fixed his prerace problem, he never proved to be a factor in the Daytona 500. He was in the middle of the pack much of the day but took advantage of a nine-car crash late to move up a few spots. Truex finished 11th and extended the Daytona 500 pole-sitter's streak to nine years without winning the race.
"We did not handle well in the beginning," Truex said. "We adjusted on it, and it came to life once the sun went down. - It's not a top-10, but to come out of Daytona in one piece is just as good."
The last pole-sitter to win the 500 was Dale Jarrett in 2000. The pole-sitter hasn't finished higher than fifth since.