NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Admits Joey Logano May be in Hot Water Over his Illegal Glove Modifications

At the Atlanta Motor Speedway, Joey Logano qualified on the front row of the grid for the race. Unfortunately, it soon transpired that he had made some illegal modifications to his racing gloves. As a result, he was ordered to drop to the back of the field and also take a pass through penalty on pit road. He did his best to recover, but later crashed out of the race, taking out Chris Buescher and Denny Hamlin.

As it happened, his glove was webbed in order to provide an aerodynamic advantage. What this tactic does is deflect air from coming into the car and creating drag. Evidently, NASCAR did not appreciate the stunt and called him out on it. There was suspicion that the gloves helped him to secure a front row and probably pole at Daytona the previous weekend. Now, NASCAR’s VP of competition, Elton Sawyer has addressed the controversy.

What will happen to Joey Logano in the wake of this?

Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, “If you just take exactly what happened at the race track from a competition perspective. Try to enhance the performance on the race track. Obviously, we see time and time again at superspeedways and other events, where the drivers will stick their hand out the window. That’s not something that we’ve been all that alarmed about. When you take it to the level that you have modified one of the safety equipment, gloves in particular, and then using that. So the penalty at the race track, was based off of that, so we disallowed the qualifying time for the #22 to the back. Then had him perform a pass through penalty under green.”

READ MORE: Wreck Trifecta Victim Denny Hamlin Holds Joey Logano Responsible for a Trail of Destruction At Atlanta

“The next step of that is, when you look at safety equipment. We look at this very hard, take it very seriously. There’s been numerous meetings all this time about safety, of the car and the equipment and the drivers. When you take and alter that, will be something that we’ll discuss today, if it needs to have additional penalty added to that. The reason I want to be really clear on that, is that, what happened at the race track and the way it was handled, was strictly based on performance. Using that device, now alters the SFI safety piece of apparel, that’s a different topic that we’ll discuss today.”

Frankly, a further penalty will be a massive blow for the 2-time Cup Series champion. The most likely scenario would be a fine for the #22 Team Penske driver. After all, this kind of penalty was fairly unusual, so Logano has to be cut some slack. Then again, some precedent has to be set so that he or another driver don’t take advantage again.

The Team Penske driver was enjoying himself at Atlanta

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Truthfully, Logano got very lucky with his on-track penalty. Just as he was taking his pass through penalty on the second lap, the field wrecked and eliminated multiple drivers. From there, he was right in the mix for the lead on several occasions and looked pretty strong.

That great form lasted until Stage 2 when he tried to block Chris Buescher and mis-timed it. As a result, he was sent into the wall, along with Buescher, and an innocent Denny Hamlin got caught up. At the time, he had led 27 laps, so this was a massive blow to his chances of winning.

Read More: Atlanta Motor Speedway Gets a Major Alteration, Much to Drivers’ Disappointment