Logano’s Eventful Daytona Speedweek

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    The Chronicle - March 201414

    Chronicled

    by Dave Burnham

    A new season of NASCARSprint Cup Series action began atDaytona International Speedway

    Feb. 23 with the running of the56th annual Daytona 500. Aftera week of practice and qualifyinglaps and races, Middletown nativeJoey Logano started his Team Pen-ske No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil FordFusion from 35th position in the43-car field.

    When the green flag waswaved by actor Gary Sinise (CSINew York,Forrest Gump) to heraldthe start of the Great AmericanRace, Logano began a slow andsteady climb to the front of thepack.

    After the first round of sched-uled pit stops on lap 24, Logano

    was sitting in 10th position, butless than 10 laps later, a massiverain storm swept across the 2.5-

    mile Floridian superspeedway.Band after band of rain engulfedthe track, resulting in a six-hourdelay, with the race resuming un-der floodlights at just after 8:30

    p.m. Eastern Time.After the restart, Logano con-

    sistently ran in the top 10 and, withsolid use of the draft, he drove hisway to the lead on lap 71 and ledfor two laps before crew chiefTodd Gordon called him to pit laneunder green flag conditions for atire and fuel stop.

    Logano and his Penske team-mate Brad Keselowski ran a dif-ferent pit sequence from the restof the field for most of the night,which resulted in ever-changingtrack positions. Once things cy-cled through, the two Team Penskecars continued to run well among

    the top five.Late in the race, Logano had

    to narrowly avoid several multi-

    car accidents as he continued tofight for a top finish. With lessthan 10 laps remaining Loganopitted for four fresh tires and fueland, despite restarting in 22nd, hequickly forced his way back intothe top 15.

    As Logano came to the check-ered flag, he was once again ableto avoid a multi-car accident and

    made a spectacular save at the bot-tom of the track to cross the line in11th position. This was Loganossecond top-15 Daytona 500 finishto go along with his ninth-place re-sult for Joe Gibbs Racing in 2012.

    We had decent speed, Loga-no said. I thought the 2 car [BradKeselowski] might have been alittle faster, but that was a crazy,crazy race at the end. Its funny be-cause you line up behind Brad andhe gets a hole and I dont, and thenyou see where he goes and whereyoure at. With 10 to go we wereall the way in the back. We workedour way up some. At least the fans

    are excited about the finish, or thewinner at least [Dale EarnhardtJr.]. But the guys did a great jobthe last two weeks and gave mesome decent cars. We survived it.When you start in the back, like15th or further back on the lastrestart, youre pretty sure youregonna get caught up in a crash. We

    came close enough on that last onewhen I was sideways, but I wasable to save it.

    Loganos Daytona Speed-week began Saturday, Feb. 15,with the Sprint Unlimited race,where he started from 11th posi-tion in the 17-car field and finishedfourth in the event, after leadingtwice for 11 laps.

    The following day saw thequalifying time trials to determinewho would start the 500 in posi-tions one and two and, after his15th-place qualifying effort, Lo-gano would start eighth in the firstof the two Budweiser Duels Feb.20 to set the rest of the field.

    Loganos Speedweek tooka bad turn during a practice ses-sion the day before the BudweiserDuels when he was involved ina multi-car crash that resulted inParker Kligermans Swan RacingToyota Camry getting lifted off theground and flipping upside-down.

    The crash began when Loga-

    no appeared to hit Matt Kenseth.The collision sent Paul Menardscar spinning toward the outsidewall, where it hit the No. 30 ofWestports Kligerman, lifting itoff the ground and damaging thecatch fence. Kligermans car slidon its roof for several hundred feetbefore coming to a stop.

    We were coming off four andthe 20 [Kenseth] started making amove to go down, said Logano.I assumed he was gonna go downthere. I had the run, so I was gonnafill that hole and then he started tocome back up and I was there.

    The accident meant that Loga-no was forced to use a back-up carfor his Duel race and would have

    to drop to the back of the field.Logano spent little time at the

    back and soon raced his way up tofifth. Late in the race, he made acharge toward the front and got tofourth, but got stuck on the bottomlane and shuffled back. Ultimately,Logano got stuck behind Kliger-mans Toyota that was blowing anengine, couldnt get back to thehigh lane and fell back to 17th atthe finish.

    I just made the wrong movelate in the race, said Logano. Werode for a long time right aroundseventh or eighth and the only wayto get to the front was to jump to

    the bottom lane and try and go.We got all the way to fourth andthere was an opening up top and Ishould have jumped in line, but Ithought we would be able to makeup a few more spots. Unfortu-nately, we just lost momentum andthen fell back.

    Loganos Eventful Daytona Speedweek

    Middletowns Joey Logano leads Kyle Busch (18) and Daytona 500 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. (88) during the Sprint Unlimited race Feb.15. Photo: NASCAR Media.

    Connecticuts own Joey Logano relaxes before the Great American Race. Photo:NASCAR Media.

    Native American and English Early Encounters

    Algonquian natives in the early1630s invited English invaders,who had formed communities atPlymouth and Massachusetts Bay, tosettle in the lower Connecticut Rivervalley. One native group, the Wan-gunks, asked English families tosit down with them, first at Pyquag,now Wethersfield, and later at Mat-tabesecke, now Middletown. Suc-cesses and failures of the social ex-periment initiated by the Wangunkshelp illustrate the ways in which in-teractions between Anglo Americansand Native Americans profoundlyshaped the lives of both peoples in

    southern New England well into theeighteenth century.

    The story of these early encoun-ters between Algonquians and theEnglish in the lower Connecticut val-ley will be the subject of an illustrat-ed talk by Jim Sarbaugh on Tuesday,March 4, at 7 p.m. in the HubbardRoom at Russell Library.

    An independent researcher, Jimstudied anthropology and history atWesleyan University where he de-veloped interests in the history andcultures of native peoples of Ameri-ca. He has studied with, and writtenabout, Cherokees in the southeast and

    Oklahoma. A resident of MiddlesexCounty for the past forty years, hehas collected information about localhistory with particular interest in ear-ly interactions between native Algon-quian people and the English. A por-tion of his research was conducted inthe Historical Societys archives.

    Russell Library, located at 123Broad Street in Middletown, is hand-icap accessible. The program is freeand open to the public. For more in-formation, contact the Historical So-ciety at 860-346-0746.

    Presented by the Middlesex County Historical Society