– Richard Pettysaid Matt Kenseth was “lucky” to get off with exclusively a two-race suspension rather than three after wrecking Joey Logano two weeks ago at Martinsville Speedway. If he’s to advance in the Chase, he can’t do it on points.
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Logano needed to win the race in order to move on to Homestead and had a fast auto during the race running near the front of the field most of the night.
Johnson turned a lap at 143.158 miles per hour in qualifying Friday to win the pole at Phoenix global Raceway for Sunday’s Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500. Kenseth, the 2003 champion, had said he felt Logano crashed him intentionally while Logano maintained he hadn’t. Kenseth also accused Logano of “doing everything in his power to try to aggravate me more” on track at Talladega the week after Kansas.
“It was a long day for everybody and to have it end like that wasn’t surprising”, Keselowski said.
Series spokesman David Higdon confirmed to USA TODAY Sports on Monday morning that “NASCAR has asked the driver of the 20 to meet with chairman and CEO Brian France” on Monday.
“I felt like I was nearly encouraged”, Kenseth told the AP. “It was not a deal where I went out and took somebody out ’cause they took me out”, he stated.
Sunday a third-place finish finally ended Logano’s title hopes. But Kenseth earned a two-race suspension – because of the stakes Logano had at the time – and he doesn’t believe the disparity in penalties is fair. He runs at Phoenix needing to win to make the four-driver championship race at Homestead-Miami.
“I didn’t think he had to be suspended”, Hendrick said. I took people out and they took me out, and it was deliberate, but it wasn’t that brazen.
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“You can’t help the weather”, Logano said. “He may do the same thing, but he’ll think about that one way or another, we’re going to even the score”.
