“Way to go, Austin, way to go, you dumb f—!” screamed Joey Logano as Austin Cindric’s antics handed Bubba Wallace the Stage win at Talladega. Team radio communications at superspeedways have always revealed the thin line between cooperation and competition in NASCAR. From Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s famous closed-door team meetings to Tony Stewart’s public critiques of teammates, the sport’s history is littered with moments when team dynamics spilled into public view.
Now, as Joey Logano’s explosive radio rant against Austin Cindric at Talladega continues to reverberate through the garage, former champion Kevin Harvick has stepped into the fray with a perspective that challenges the narrative. Like a veteran crew chief analyzing telemetry data others might miss, Harvick sees something different in the incident that triggered Logano’s infamous outburst.
But first, let’s hear from Logano. “Yeah, my perspective is the same. It hasn’t changed a bit. I don’t think TV captured exactly what upset me. And I’m not here to irritate Audrey (Austin) either. I’m here to talk about what our internal rules of going at it at super speedways are. At this point, there’s sometimes a straw that breaks the camel’s back. It may have been at that moment. We’re out there in the heat of battle and when something that was set to be a certain way doesn’t go the way that we all agreed to, maybe not the first time, you’re going to get a little frustrated about it. At this point, we talked. We communicated. We’re still teammates, right? We’re still brothers.”
“I do disagree with Joey’s assessment of that,” Harvick stated clearly during a recent appearance at The Kevin Harvick Show with Mamba Smith and Kaitlyn Vincie. “The thing that it looked like to me was there was so much momentum going forward that he had to pop out of line and put himself in a spot to where he wasn’t just going to ram into the back of the 22. A lot of times what happens in that scenario, if you just try to hit the car in front of you, then it stacks you up and you’re already being pushed, then sometimes it spits you out and spins you out,” Harvick explained
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Superspeedway racing creates unique scenarios where pushing too aggressively can trigger multi-car accidents—a reality Harvick understands intimately. But for Cindric, the way things were at the end of Stage 2, he was lined up on the outside behind Wallace while Logano was down the inside with Hocevar behind him. For Cindric to suddenly switch lanes at 200 mph and support Logano would have certainly caused a crash. At the same time, had Cindric slowed down, he risked another crash from the back. It was a lose-lose situation.
Despite defending Cindric’s actions, Kevin Harvick acknowledged why Logano might have felt betrayed in the moment. “I think from a driver’s standpoint, you always feel like you’re getting hung out by your teammate or he could have helped you and you have this plan that is laid out before the race with the manufacturers and you’re expecting him to push. Joey definitely went off. I was a little surprised that he went off on the radio like that.”
Logano’s temper has cooled considerably since the incident, telling SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s The Morning Drive, “Austin and I talked about it. We’ve got to move forward. That’s what it is. I explained my side. He understood. We move on.” This resolution follows the pattern Team Penske has established for handling internal conflicts, which Cindric himself acknowledged requires “constant maintenance” and conversations that “aren’t always easy.”
The situation has drawn parallels to past Team Penske tensions, including the famous 2017 friction between Logano and Brad Keselowski at Martinsville that ultimately strengthened their working relationship. Baseball Hall of Famer Chipper Jones even weighed in on social media, criticizing Logano’s approach—a critique the NASCAR champion dismissed by questioning Jones’ racing credentials: “Has Chipper Jones ever driven a race car at Talladega? That would be my first question.”
For what it’s worth, Austin Cindric wasn’t thinking too hard about it. “I look to not put much value into it. I feel like we do a lot for each other, and I feel like we have to not overlook what makes us so good, because that’s the truth, and you see it time and time again with our company on these types of tracks.”
Preece’s Heartbreaking Near-Miss at Talladega
While the Penske guys were fighting each other, there was a different driver suffering from Cindric’s success. After the photo finish of the Xfinity race, one RFK driver made it two photo-finishes in a matter of 24 hours.
Ryan Preece came within a whisker of his first Cup Series victory on Sunday, crossing the finish line just 0.022 seconds behind Austin Cindric at Talladega. The RFK Racing driver, who nearly left NASCAR altogether last year when opportunities seemed scarce, showed remarkable speed in the final stage. “I’m happy but as a racer, you want to win,” Preece admitted after the race, his disappointment evident despite securing a career-best second-place finish.
The result continues Preece’s surprising early-season form, giving him multiple top-five finishes for the first time in his Cup career after just ten races. “Without this opportunity, I’d probably be back in Connecticut racing Modifieds,” reflected Preece, who dedicated his performance to the modified racing community where he won a championship in 2013. Though his hard-earned result was later stripped due to post-race inspection issues with the rear spoiler, the speed shown by the #60 car confirms that Preece’s breakthrough victory might not be far away.
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