Joey Logano’s a driver who always smiles through interviews, but when he’s on track, he means serious business. And when a driver tries to sabotage his race, Logano tends to bring his full wrath. And often he kind of goes overboard with it.
The Richmond incident from last season is still fresh in our memories. How Austin Dillon wrecked him on that last corner to take away the win. And in retaliation, Logano revved up in front of the #3 driver’s crew in the pit lane. Even Dillon’s wife and kids were there. And several in the NASCAR community thought this reaction was a bit much.
And this time, it was Logano’s own teammate facing the defending champion’s aggression. Everyone was shocked at the things Logano said to Austin Cindric for a simple mistake in Talladega. And the latest one to pull Logano’s leg over it was Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Dale Earnhardt Jr Questioned Joey Logano on the Talladega Controversy
Before we get into what Earnhardt Jr. said, here’s a refresher. In the race, Logano and Bubba Wallace were fighting for the stage two win. And that’s when Cindric gave Wallace a little push to make room. But this put Wallace ahead of Logano. And when the #22 car was also hoping for a push from Cindric to take back the lead, Cindric suddenly checked up. And Wallace ended up taking the stage win.
This had Logano lash out in the most unexpected fashion. Yelling on the radio, he said, “Way to go, Austin, way to go, you dumb f***! Way to f**k*g go. What a stupid s**t. You just gave it to him (Wallace). Gave a Toyota a stage win. Nice job. Way to go. What a dumbass. Put that in the book again.”
Well, come on, this was a little uncalled for, and Dale Jr couldn’t help but address it in his recent “Dale Jr Download” podcast episode. So, Logano recently won the Texas race, his first for the season. And that’s what Junior invited the Penske driver to talk about on the podcast. But the Talladega incident was too good to let go.
In fact, Junior kicked off the interview with that. He said, “I was like Joey Logano, what a foul mouth. Did your mother have a problem with that? Did your wife say, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Cause I could hear my mom going “Man, let’s do what we can do without that.’ I could see my wife’s grandmother calling me and going, “What are you doing?”
And Junior was in disbelief, as this was probably the first time Logano lashed out at a teammate in such a manner. And Cindric’s reason for the move was that he had to check up, to avoid a crash with Logano. But responding to Junior Logano clarified how it was all said in the heat of the moment.
“Yeah, it happens. Here’s the thing, I’m very emotional and what you see is what you get, so and I think that’s like really hard for people to understand sometimes. Because like I’m naturally a pretty happy person, like I enjoy life, and you know whatever comes to my mind is going to come out of my mouth.”
And well, Logano has already spoken about making it up with Cindric over this. So it’s done and dusted.