Joey Logano will be forced to use a backup No. 22 Team Penske Ford for the remainder of the Sprint Cup weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway after hitting the wall in practice.
With about an hour to go in practice, Logano suffered a left-rear tire failure while going into Turn 1.
The Connecticut native battled to keep his primary car from crashing but ultimately couldn’t save it.
Just minutes after the incident, Team Penske had the backup No. 22 out of its transporter and inside their garage stall at NHMS.
As for Logano, he was able to get out of the car under his own power and was eventually released from the infield care center.
“It wasn’t even close [to being saved],” Logano said to Fox Sports. “I needed about 500 more yards of straightaway to save that one. But unfortunately, we’ve got the second [car] out here to try and get tuned up for the race.
“It’s a bummer. I felt like our car was actually pretty good. It wasn’t great, but by all means, we were getting closer. I felt we were a Top 5 car and hopefully, this one’s just as good.”
Interestingly, Logano noted that this has been the third failure he’s had personally with this particular type of tire. All of them have involved the left-rear tire.
“And [today’s failure] was the third run on the tire, so that was kind of odd,” he added. “But it’s something we’ve had issues with on this tire. I had one go down in a Milwaukee test, [and] I know they had some issues when the cars tested here…And it’s left-rears all the time.
“I don’t know what it is…Maybe we need to look at something we’re doing to cause it, but we’ll figure it out.”
This ongoing session is expected to run until 1 p.m. ET, with qualifying for Sunday’s Camping World RV Sales 301 taking place later today at 4:40 p.m. ET.
