On paper, it looks like Joey Logano finished Sunday’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 500 at the Texas Motor Speedway in the same spot that he finished in – 2nd. However, it was far from an uneventful day for him.

While Logano led on 6 separate occasions for just 15 laps, he still would finish runner-up on an afternoon/night that saw him finish 3rd in Stage 1 and 8th in Stage 2. He was up front, then back, then up again, then back battling his No. 22 Ford for all 334 laps.

In the end, after all the chaos, there he was restarting 2nd and in a position to win. However, his car was shaking and on a day that saw so many tire failures, he didn’t want to push it too hard and risk becoming a victim as well.

“Yeah, the tires, if they aren’t blowing out then they are square,” Logano said. “They were shaking like crazy. That is what happened there the last run. The last couple of runs really, just shaking the car.

“We got tight a couple runs and last time I got one that was off in the rear and we got loose. I think (Tyler) Reddick was fighting the same thing from what I heard there. You get that close to the win and you just know that if you just had that it might have been good enough to win the race.

“At the same time we should be happy that we scored a bunch of points today. It is bittersweet, I guess. It was a successful day for points scored. We got stage points in both stages and we were able to get a bunch by finishing second there. Yeah, it was a sloppy race for everyone on the track. We were just able to position ourselves really good at the end. Paul (Wolfe) did a good job calling the race and putting four tires on when we needed to and putting two tires on when we needed to cycle forward.”

Logano now leads the points heading to Talladega and so long as he can manage this margin, he should be able to get to the Round of 8 again.

In terms of Texas, this was his 12th career top 5 in 27 starts including 3 in the last 5 at that.