NASCAR fans criticize Joey Logano for doing what they criticized Kyle Busch for not doing

NASCAR fans are mad at Joey Logano for doing at Dover what they were mad at Kyle Busch for not doing at Charlotte just one week prior.

When Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch got out of his car during the red flag period with seven laps remaining in the 109-lap NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway roval, effectively “quitting” and taking a finish of 10 laps off the lead lap, he was met with much criticism.

Busch ended up finishing this race, the third and final race of the round of 16, in 37th place and scored one point. Had he actually finished the race, he would have finished in 36th and scored point.

So he lost absolutely nothing as a result of his decision, which meant absolutely nothing to begin with since he had already clinched a spot in the round of 12.

Skip ahead a mere seven days to the race at Dover International Speedway, the opening race of the three-race round of 12.

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Team Penske’s Joey Logano didn’t even start the race when the green flag flew, as a busted rear axle sent him to the garage. When his #22 Ford finally made its way back out onto the four-turn, 1.0-mile (1.609-kilometer) Monster Mile oval in Dover, Delaware, he was running two dozen laps off the lead lap.

As the end of stage two (lap 240) of this 400-lap race neared, the leaders approached Logano on the track. But Logano simply didn’t move over for them, and that ended up sending Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin from the lead, which he held from the pole position for 218 of the first 228 laps, to third place while promoting Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyle Larson from second to first and third to second, respectively.

To be fair, what Logano did while running 24 laps off the lead lap was kind of baffling considering it could set the tone for how he is raced down the road by those same drivers. All of them are playoff drivers, so it is very likely that we will see all of them at the front of the field at some point over the course of the season’s final six races.

But he also refused to quit just days after fans raked Busch over the coals for quitting.

Yet he still took a ton of criticism, especially after Hamlin sounded off about this run-in after settling for fifth place, as most fans questioned his position to race how he was racing at that point in the event.

So when Busch quits, he’s supposedly a loser and a jerk and an overrated bum and everything in between.

Yet when Logano doesn’t quit, he’s also supposedly loser and a jerk and an overrated bum and everything in between.

Got it.

What adds more irony to this already flawed concept is the fact that one of the reasons Busch “quit” when he did was because he didn’t want to get in anybody else’s way — exactly what fans are upset at Logano for — when they had more on the line than he did. His car also had damage, so avoiding further damage was completely understandable.

What adds even more irony is the fact that Logano, by staying out and running the race, actually gained two points, as he scored three points with a 34th place finish. So yes, he still had something on the line.

He is currently tied for the eighth and final transfer spot to the round of 8 because of it, although he is technically behind eighth place William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports as a result of a tiebreaker. But had he settled for anywhere from 36th to 38th, he would have scored only one point, and he would be completely below the round of 8 cut line.

Wow, such a “loser”!

Yet Busch had absolutely nothing to gain when he quit from a points perspective or a playoff perspective.

Wow, what a “quitter”!

To add on to that even more, everyone who knows anything about NASCAR knows how challenging it has been to pass at Dover International Speedway this season due to the new rules package. Busch even said after the May race at the track that the package “sucked”.

So putting Logano, who was still driving a relatively fast #22 Ford once repaired from its early issue, another lap down was never going to be an easy task for anybody.

Bottom line, you’re never going to satisfy the NASCAR fanbase. Never. If they’re not complaining about one thing, they’re complaining about another thing, even if it’s the exact opposite of what they were just complaining about two days ago. The Kyle Busch and Joey Logano incidents from the last two weekends prove that.

Of course, I don’t speak for all NASCAR fans and understand that there are thousands upon thousands who don’t subscribe to this “complain at all costs” methodology that has seemed to engulf the sport over the course of several decades.

But if you’re reading this article, you clearly have access to the internet, so go check out the comments on any NASCAR-related social media post nowadays to see just what I’m talking about.