Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Joey Logano’s ‘creativity’ to attempt to modify gloves at Atlanta Motor Speedway

One of the biggest stories coming out of this past weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway was Joey Logano’s illegally modified glove, which NASCAR penalized him and later fined him for as well.

Logano, who qualified second for the Ambetter Health 400 before NASCAR forced him to start from the rear of the field and serve a pass-through penalty, had a webbed glove used to deflect air away from the window. Chris Knight of Catchfence reported that NASCAR informed the media the glove was “altered” in order to gain a competitive advantage when blocking air with his hand. NASCAR ruled the glove did not meet “SFI specification,” violating rule 14.3.1.1 of the NASCAR Rule Book.

Logano faces a $10,000 fine but is not facing a point deduction. Dale Earnhardt Jr., speaking on his “Dirty Mo Media” podcast this week, dived into Logano’s creative approach in attempting to modify his gloves.

“He’s got this glove, [and] they filled the fingers with a web material so when he sticks his hand out the window in front of the window net, it’s knocking air off the rear spoiler,” Earnhardt said. “… You know when you have basically no creativity or flexibility, when teams have nowhere else to look for an advantage, they are going to find these quirky little spaces to work in right, like gloves… Maybe Joey’s like, ‘I’ve been sticking my hand out the window, I’ve been doing this for you guys for several years now, what if we did something to the gloves and made it even better.’ Maybe Joey had this idea who knows.”

Elton Sawyer explains Joey Logano penalty for modified glove

The penalty didn’t impact Logano one bit, thanks to a Lap 2 caution while he was serving the pass-through penalty. Logano was right back on the lead lap and wasted no time making his way to the front. Logano, who had qualified second, had one of the fastest cars at Atlanta, leading 27 laps.

His bid for a win came to an end on Lap 160-of-260. Logano threw an ill-advised block on Chris Buescher, causing a wreck which involved Denny Hamlin as well. Logano finished the race 28th. He finished a disappointing 32nd in the Daytona 500 the week prior.

Speaking on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio earlier this week, NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer explained the penalty for Logano.

“If you take exactly what happened on track from a competition perspective and trying to enhance the performance on the racetrack… Obviously, we see time and time again at superspeedways and other events, drivers stick their hand out the window. That’s not something we’ve been all that alarmed about,” Sawyer said. “When you take it to the level that you have modified one of the safety equipment, gloves in particular and then using that, the penalty at the track was based off that. We disallowed the qualifying time and sent the 22 to the back and sent them to a pass through.

“The next step is when you look at safety equipment. We look at it very closely and take it very seriously. There have been numerous meetings over time about safety of the car and the equipment and the driver.”