As Joey Logano rolled to a stop on pit road at Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL this past Sunday and exited his No. 22 Team Penske Ford at race’s end, the disappointment of not advancing on to the Round of 8 in NASCAR’s Playoffs was certainly evident.
As he and his wife left the track and headed home, Logano’s phone rang. Someone from his team called and told him that something might be wrong with Alex Bowman’s No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. After the inspection process was completed, NASCAR determined Bowman’s car did not meet the minimum weight requirement and was disqualified. That meant Bowman did not make the Round of 8, giving the spot to Logano.
Logano rejoined four drivers who have already won at least one championship (himself, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney) and four drivers going for their first (Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, William Byron, Tyler Reddick) in the playoff field.
“I was obviously surprised,” Logano said. “I heard rumors before that of a delay in tech and some of those things going on. Usually, nothing happens. It was kind of a surprise to hear that. Typically, by the time you roll the car off the scales, they give them the opportunity to put weight in the cars and you’re usually fine, but in this case that wasn’t the case, and I was like, ‘Well, would we be in?’ That’s the first question you have to ask and obviously the answer was yes, and then you’re still kind of cautiously optimistic because you’re thinking, ‘Well, there probably will be an appeal if there is and we may not know until later,’ so you kind of keep going on with your life and preparing for the next race. Obviously, it came out yesterday (Oct. 14) that they’re not appealing, so we move on and into the Round of 8 and off we go.”
The Round of 8 begins this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The two-time champion opens the round in eighth place, 11 points below the cut line.
Sometimes teams do fail inspections and in many cases, appeals are lodged with NASCAR. In this case, Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick felt it was a mistake made within his organization and felt the appeal wasn’t necessary.
“I can’t speak on the specifics of what happened and how it happened,” Logano said. “It’s obvious that NASCAR gives us half-a-percent of the total weight of the vehicle after the race. That rule is there for multiple reasons.
“In the past, obviously, there are games played there. What they are and how it works, you’re talking to the wrong guy on that, but some rules are gray that you can interpret in two different ways and some are black and white. When it comes to numbers and the weight of a vehicle, it’s a little bit easier to look at and say it’s either black or white, but I can’t speak to the specifics of how it happened or what games are played and how often it happens. I can’t answer those.”
Logano has a new lease on his championship hopes and plans to work to win the championship the way he would have before. That is to give his all to winning a third-career championship. He doesn’t plan to change anything about they way he and crew chief Paul Wolfe will go about racing the remaining events on the schedule.
“…You go out there and you attack,” Logano said. “The positives, I feel like we’ve been steadily getting better and improving throughout the season to where we are now. I feel confident in the speed we have in our car. Kansas, we had a lot of speed and almost won the first stage there. We have to clean up a couple issues on the execution side. Talladega is Talladga. We got caught up in the big crash there, but the speed we also had this weekend at the Roval looked pretty solid to me, to where we are a Championship 4 caliber race team. The stats may not look like it.”
Logano has enjoyed some interesting outcomes this season. He survived five overtime restarts to win at Nashville on June 30. Since NASCAR introduced the playoff system in 2014, Logano has never missed a Final Four in an even-numbered season. Experience has taught him that anything can happen.
“It may look like we’re underdogs from the outset looking in, but internally we feel very confident in our race team that we can make a run at this thing and get ourselves into the Championship 4. We’ve seen it in the past where you get in there and anything can happen at Phoenix. The goal right now is to look at the next three races and how we maximize that. We can point our way in. We’re only 11 (points) out, so it’s not a lot of points by no means. It can happen very quickly, so one race at a time. Right now, the focus is Vegas, and we’ll try to maximize the day there.”
Logano is fine with second chances, especially if they lead to the big prize at season’s end.
