NASCAR At Darlington Nationwide Series Results: Joey Logano Apologizes After Spinning Elliott Sadler

Joey Logano expressed remorse for unintentionally spinning Elliott Sadler toward the end of Friday night’s Nationwide Series race at Darlington Raceway, saying the incident made his victory “bittersweet.”

With five laps to go, Logano lined up third behind race leader Sadler, who was on two older tires. When Sadler slightly spun his tires, Logano’s shove got him out of shape and the No. 2 car spun and crashed.

“First and foremost, I need to apologize to Elliott,” Logano said. “That wasn’t intentional. I was trying to help him.”

On the restart prior to the one in question, Logano successfully pushed Sadler and gave him momentum going into Turn 1. But when he tried to do the same thing again, it didn’t work.

“I kept trying to push him,” Logano said. “I was trying to shove him ahead. It worked the first time ... once he started getting sideways, I couldn’t get off him in time. I was trying to lift ... I shoved him around.”

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver said, “You don’t want to win ‘em that way,” and was cognizant of the fact Sadler was running for points.

Sadler went from sitting just five points out of the Nationwide championship lead to 23 points behind the top spot after Darlington.

“Your heart drops,” Logano said. “You know he’s running for points. You know the championship is really close between him and (Ricky Stenhouse Jr.). You don’t want to be the guy who does something like that, you know?

“We’re all out there trying to win the race, but at no point in my mind was I ever like, ‘I’m going to wreck him to win this thing.’ I don’t want to win races that way.”

Logano placed a call to Sadler before he even reached the media center, but the call went to voicemail and he left a message. He planned to try and find Sadler in person before the night was over to apologize in person.

Here are the full results from Friday night’s Nationwide Series race at Darlington: