Joey Logano left Monday’s Crayon 301 feeling bummed. He felt like he truly had a shot of chasing down Martin Truex Jr. for the win. He saw that Truex was struggling a bit and felt like he could track him down. So much so, he even devised a plan in his head to take his No. 22 Ford by Truex’s No. 19 Toyota in the closing laps.

“I thought I would have had something,” Logano said. “Right before that caution came out two cautions to the end when we had tires on it seemed like the 19 took a few laps to get going. I was running him down, I was like man, I’ve got a chance here.

“That caution came out right when I was thinking I could make a move on the outside into 3.

“And then it seemed like the cycles helped him get his pressures up to where he can refire and be pretty quick the last couple restarts.”

Instead, Truex held Logano off for an emotional victory in the process.

For Logano, he came home runner-up. However, being second here isn’t like being second elsewhere.

“Dang it, the home track, there’s no place you want to win more than this, so it stings to not get the Shell-Pennzoil Ford into Victory Lane,” he says. “But gosh, second just sucks sometimes, you know. It stings the most when you’re that close and feeling like you had a shot at it. Still a good day for us.”

This is a second sting for him as he was also runner-up in February’s Daytona 500 too.

“Second is the worst, man. You’re so close,” Logano said then. “Leading the white flag lap there, I was up front. Kyle gave me a good push and, yeah, you’re watching in the mirror and you’re three wide across there. I felt like the three wide was going a hurt a lane; looked like Kyle was getting pushed ahead, and then Ricky started getting pushed ahead.

“I knew if I went to the bottom my car didn’t handle good enough. I already got pushed off the bottom once and I thought, if I go down there I’m probably going to get wrecked, and I don’t know if I can get down there in time to throw the block and so I didn’t want to wreck my car either.

“Then you don’t expect them to wreck either. You think you’re racing to the checkered flag and you put yourself in the best position to try to win at the start-finish line, and just caution came out — you wish you could race to the end. Obviously you can’t when they wreck that much.

“Congratulations to Ricky. There’s nothing like winning the Daytona 500. That’s why it stings so much finishing second.

“Still proud of the team, still proud of the effort coming off the championship last year and bringing this Shell-Pennzoil Mustang back toward the front and getting a Ford close to the front. Wish it was in Victory Lane, though.”

Still this gives Logano big optimism for Phoenix if he can get back there in November. It’s no secret that the Ford’s are down in comparison to Chevrolet and Toyota. But, this looks a lot like last season for which Logano struggled mid season but turned it on late.

By comparison, in this stretch of races that he’s on now, he finished 17th (Sonoma), 27th (Road America), 26th (Atlanta) and 24th (Loudon) a year ago. This year, he’s finished third (Sonoma), 8th (Chicago street race, replaced Road America), 17th (Atlanta) and now 2nd (Loudon).

Also last year, this is the stretch to where he got hot again in scoring finishes of 6th, 4th, 6th, 3rd and 12th in the final five races to the regular season.

For Loudon in general this past weekend, they wanted to try something new and for it to pay off with another runner-up, that’s a massive win.

“Yeah, directionally that was good we tried a lot of new things today,” he admitted.” We weren’t good here last year, so we tried a lot of different things. Some things better, some things not, but overall kind of can hang in the Top 5 all day and have a shot at the win.

“Still a lot of work to do to be the favorite at the moment, but we’re making the right steps right now.”

Logano was 11th in the spring race at Phoenix, but 7th in Richmond, 2nd in Martinsville and now 2nd in Loudon.