BRISTOL, Tenn. – Unsurprisingly, Joey Logano and Chase Elliott had differing views on the late crash that eliminated both of them from contention for the victory at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday.
Logano and Elliott were locked in a fierce battle at the end of Sunday’s Food City presents the Supermarket Heroes 500, scrapping back and forth after a restart with five laps left.
Elliott took the lead off the green flag, but Logano stayed committed to the bottom and passed Elliott on the inside to take command on lap 497 of 500 – making the move without contact.
Determined to rally back, Elliott swapped to the bottom on lap 498 after getting a big run coming down the frontstretch up top, but made slight contact with the left rear of Logano’s Ford exiting turn two.
Elliott then sailed his Chevrolet down into the third turn and washed up, slamming into the side of Logano’s car before the momentum took both of the top two up into the outside SAFER Barrier.
Brad Keselowski slipped through on the inside to lead the final three laps and steal the win, while Logano and Elliott were scored 21st and 22nd, respectively, at the checkered flag.
Though Elliott later took the blame for the incident, the two had a discussion on pit road during which Logano said he had to “force an apology.”
The 2018 NASCAR Cup Series champion was then very direct when asked by FOX Sports about his view on what happened between him and Elliott at the end.
“He wrecked me. He got loose underneath me,” said Logano of Elliott. “The part that’s frustrating is that afterwards a simple apology – like be a man and come up to someone and say, ‘Hey, my bad.’ But I had to force an apology, which, to me, is childish.
“Anyways, we had a good recovery with our Autotrader Mustang and had a shot to win. That’s all you can hope for,” Logano added. “I passed him clean. It comes down to hard racing at the end, and I get that. It’s hard racing, but golly … be a man and take the hit when you’re done with it.”
Elliott and Logano were two of the dominant drivers in Sunday’s race. The former swept both stages and led seven times for 88 laps, while Logano only led two of 500 laps Sunday but had rallied back into contention from a speeding penalty on pit road earlier on and was in the top five much of the day.
For his part, Elliott did accept the blame for causing the incident, but chalked what happened up to “just going for the win.”
“I was trying to get a run underneath (Logano) and got really loose in. I don’t know if I had a tire going down or if I just got loose on entry. But as soon as I turned off the wall, I had zero chance of making it,” Elliott noted. “I’ll certainly take the blame. … I just got loose and got up into him. I feel like that was my shot, though. He was really good on the short runs and I felt like I had to keep him behind me right there in order to win the race with only three or four laps to go.
“I hate we both wrecked, but you can’t go back in time now.”