"My team does not pay me to push Joey Logano to win"

As Sunday's Daytona 500 came in overtime, Joe Gibbs Racing's teammates, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, worked together to stay ahead.

Logano, who had one of the fastest cars in Sunday's race, was looking for a helping hand to try to bring down the duo. He watched Michael McDowell, another Ford driver, but McDowell instead chose to go to work with Busch.

Hamlin was found with the win while Logano finished fourth and McDowell fifth. Logano expressed dissatisfaction with McDowell during a conversation on the stands after the race.

"I'm just surprised by the situation and what happened," Logano said of his conversation with McDowell. "I thought it would be the plan (working together). At this point, he was not going to win, he should overtake Kyle.

"It's also racing, I guess, and we can not win these things alone, we've proven it a lot, but we've done what we can do."

Still, with a victory in a Daytona duel and a top-five finish in the 500, Logano was happy to be able to travel to Atlanta next week.

"It's a good momentum," he said. "We continued our momentum of last year, so it's good."

For his part, McDowell stated that he was accompanied by the pilot who, according to him, gave him the best chance of winning.

"Number 18 (Busch) had a big race, a lot of momentum and Joey had a lot of damage," he said. "Joey was not going to win the race. I wanted to put myself in the best place to win the race and the Ford were not so friendly with me this weekend. "

Asked about his conversation with Logano, McDowell said, "I just told him that my team does not pay me to push Joey Logano to victory. It's not what I'm paid to do.

"At 200 miles at the hour, I took a split second to choose the fastest and most efficient car, that's where I went."

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