© Gary A. Vasquez/Imagn
It’s been a difficult start to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season for reigning champion Joey Logano. Despite having good speed, Logano became the first defending champion to fail to earn a top 10 finish in the first 4 races of the following season.
Much of Logano’s struggles have been down to luck, as he crashed out of the Daytona 500 despite leading several laps and got spun late in the race at Circuit of the Americas while running in the top 10.
Logano’s bad luck continued at Sunday’s race in Phoenix despite qualifying in the second position. He appeared to take the lead within the first 10 laps on a restart, but was handed a penalty for driving too low on the track prior to cross the start/finish line for the official race restart. As it turns out, Logano may well have had a good reason for violating the rule.
During the pre-race drivers meeting when all rules and protocols are discuss, Logano sat next to teammate Ryan Blaney and Bubba Wallace. Blaney and Wallace are notorious for being good friends and among the more affable drivers in the series. In a behind the scenes Instagram video from NASCAR, the two are shown joking around and laughing during the meeting. At one point, Logano is clearly distracted and attempts to find out what the pair are laughing out.
Some fans believe Logano’s lack of attention to the rules may have come back to bite him. However, he did seem to indicate that knew the rule but did not believe he violated it, at least not by enough to get called for it.
“No way,” Logano shouted over his radio when he learned of the penalty. “It was freakin’ nothing. That is ridiculous.”
Ultimately, Logano ended up having to pass through the pits and serve the penalty. He’d fight back up to the lead later in the race. But in order to do so, he took an alternate strategy that left him hung out to dry at the end of the race. Logano ultimately finished the race in 13th and sits in ninth in the series point standings. So it wasn’t a complete disaster. But in a series where winning is everything, the penalty took the possibility of doing so completely off the table.