Joey Logano has won three Cup Series championships and three races at Talladega, which makes him one of the few drivers who know how to survive NASCAR’s biggest track. The YellaWood 500 still found a way to rattle him. The Team Penske driver walked away unhurt, but he says one stretch of the afternoon left him feeling more powerless than he has ever felt in a race car. 

“The first hit was a good one. The first one ended at a wall, and then it went up in the air, and I thought, oh, s***. That’s really the thing that came to my mind,” Logano told the media, Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass reported on X. “Because it got pretty quiet there, and the brakes weren’t working anymore, which was a bad sign. And it flew for a while, and then you land, and you just hope not to get hit again because you’re just sliding upside down.

“But, honestly, the scariest thing is just when you’re sitting upside down, and you’re seeing fuel leak out. You’re seeing all this stuff. And I’ve never felt like I can’t get out of a race car before, and I kind of felt like I couldn’t get out if I had to. Maybe I would have figured it out, but it didn’t feel like I didn’t even want to try to release the belts.”

The Team Penske driver’s account captured the helplessness of sitting inverted with fuel leaking around him. Unbuckling and climbing out was not an option, so he had to wait for NASCAR’s safety crews to reach the car and roll it back onto its wheels.

The incident happened on Lap 183, with five laps remaining. Logano was running the outside lane with Ross Chastain ahead of him and Carson Hocevar behind. As the field bunched up through the tri-oval, contact sent the Ford into the outside wall, and Chase Briscoe’s No. 19 Toyota then struck it, flipping Logano over. 

The car slid on its roof for hundreds of feet as the accident grew into a 15-car pileup. The red flag flew for roughly 13 minutes while crews tended to the drivers and cleared the debris, and Logano climbed out under his own power once the car was upright.

Logano also had no way to answer his team during the slide. The crash damaged his radio equipment, leaving everyone on the box without word from him while he sat on his roof. He later explained what likely went wrong.

“I’m sure I lost my antenna,” he added. “Because I slid upside down for a mile. And then, yeah, my radio was kind of hanging down by me. Everything was pretty good. All things considered, on what could have happened. I would like to have said something. I tried to. I tried connecting my radios back up, and something probably got disconnected somewhere in that mix.”

After being evaluated at the infield care center, Logano was released and said he felt fine. Asked how he felt about the result, he made clear which emotion won out.

“I don’t know if it’d be frustrated because I wrecked or happy to be alive, and I’m kind of choosing the first to happy to be alive at this point. It was a long time to be on the lid,” he told the reporters.

The wreck inevitably recalled his April 2021 flip at Talladega, when the roof of his car crushed down toward his head. This time, he said, the damage looked different, and he pointed to NASCAR’s progress and the work of the safety team.

“The last time I flipped, it was crushed on my head,” he recalled. “This time, I don’t think anything really caved or crushed at all. I appreciate what NASCAR has done. Thank you to the safety team for getting me out of there. There were some vicious hits in that one. I’m just happy to be alive.”

He was just as unwilling to point fingers. Chastain was racing to stay on the lead lap, and Logano said he had every right to chase his own result. Chastain collected the free pass and went on to finish fourth, while Logano was classified 34th.

“Everyone has the right to go racing,” he added. “He’s racing for himself as well. I don’t know, was he one down? I think so. He got the free pass. Now he’s on the lead lap, and it wasn’t his fault we wrecked. I don’t know if you really blame it on anyone. It’s just what speedway racing is these days. It really sucks at times. At times it’s pretty awesome, and at times you end up on your lid, and you say it sucks. I like Martinsville.”

Joey Logano’s frightening experience at Talladega showed how quickly superspeedway racing can turn dangerous, even for a three-time champion. While he escaped without serious injury, the incident highlighted NASCAR’s safety progress and the risks drivers continue to face. His refusal to blame Chastain also reflected the unpredictable nature of racing at Talladega.