Todd Gordon admits hindsight may be 20-20.
Joey Logano‘s crew chief reflected Monday on “The Morning Drive” on what he may have done differently at the end of Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
With Logano leading late in the race, Gordon debated whether to bring his driver in for tires. When Kyle Larson hit the wall on Lap 479, bringing out the caution, Gordon made the call to bring Logano in for four tires.
“I thought we were in position to win the race, but the late caution threw up a decision-making time and with the information I had at the time, I chose one route and probably could have been a different route,” Gordon told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
MORE: Joey Logano finishes third at Bristol after pitting from lead late
Gordon entered the pits as the race leader, only to watch Kyle Busch remain on the track and take the lead on Lap 482.
“We had been 33 laps on tires, thought we were going to have about 18 (laps) to go (before the restart),” Gordon said. “The sort out (of the lineup) afterwards took a bit longer than I thought so we had about 15 (laps) to go when we got done. … I was scanning the radios and the 18 (Busch) said it might stay out, but my concern was that if we and the 18 stayed out and everybody else behind us comes to get tires, then there’s tires lined up on the rows behind us.
“I didn’t want to be that guy that stayed out and then got beat by tires behind us. It was a last-minute call. We had talked back and forth about whether to stay out or come for tires. I felt like if we stayed out, my opinion was we were going to see tires in Row 2 and at worse in Row 3 and it didn’t end up being that way. When we came off pit road, I think we ended up in Row 4.
“It’s just trying to anticipate what other crew chiefs are going to do with their cars is a gamble and a guess and as (the race) leader, I think we had a really strong car and everybody knew we had a strong car. I think at times people react to whatever decision you make and go the opposite way. If we stay out, I don’t know that everybody that stayed out stays out, but we’ll never know that and you try to make the decisions you can with the information you have at the time. Immediately once you see how many guys stayed out, it’s pretty evident maybe we should have made the other call.”
Logano, who won Stage 2, finished third and led the second-most laps in the race (146).
“In the future, do you make that call differently? I don’t know,” Gordon said. “You take the information you have at the time and make decisions from the information you’ve got. You’re never going to make every call right. People can second-guess what you do and where it goes and it’s very easy to sit back on Monday and say they should have run the ball instead of throwing it.
“They’re reactionary calls. You can’t calculate every situation. In this one, could I have gone the other way? Yes. Was I all the way into the middle of (Turns) 1 and 2 before I made the call for him to come because I was waffling on it? I got to the point where it was a 50-50 call in my head and when I get to 50-50 calls, I go for putting tires on because Joey is an awesome, aggressive driver and when we put him in those positions, he usually elevates.”
