The Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum delivered tight racing at the quarter-mile temporary bullring inside the L.A. Coliseum for a third straight year.
While the NASCAR Cup Series regular season doesn’t begin until Feb. 18 at Florida’s Daytona Int’l Speedway, tempers have already boiled over among drivers.
The second-to-final restart of the evening saw Ty Gibbs and Joey Logano tangle with 10 laps to go, allowing Denny Hamlin to slip past and steal the victory.
Following the checkered flag, Logano found Gibbs at his trailer and the two exchanged words.
An exchange of words after the race. pic.twitter.com/Gt3AFy0EER
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 4, 2024
After the altercation, Logano was critical of Gibbs’ move on the restart which saw Logano’s No. 22 Ford drift up the track and out of the racing lane.
“Ahh, he just used me up all the way to the wall,” Logano said. “There’s a fine line of kind of pushing each other up a little bit racing for a win and using me up with the history that he has with me is not a good idea for him.”
The two-time Cup Series champion rebounded to finish fourth after leading eight laps. Gibbs on the other hand, who led a race-high 84 laps in the 151-lap event, spun during the closing stages of the race following the contact with Logano.
“I ran him up, but if you go back and look at the replay the 12 (Ryan Blaney) kind of chucks him out of the way too,” Gibbs said. “It is just hard racing there at the end.
“This place is really hard to get your tires warm once the caution comes out – as you could see, everyone was sliding around, so I just got in there deep and washed up into him. We just got all tangled up after that.”
Gibbs also stressed the importance of improving on restarts.
“It was just unfortunate,” Gibbs said. “I just have to get better at restarts. My team brought me a great Monster Energy Camry as we saw. It was a good showing.”
Notably, Logano competed for Gibbs’ grandfather and team owner, Joe Gibbs for the first four seasons of his Cup Series career.