Logano steers his ‘wide’ Mustang to Kansas glory
Since he started fighting at the head of the NASCAR Cup field for wins and titles, Joey Logano has earned himself an unfortunate reputation as a bit of blocker, always placing his Team Penske Ford Mustang just in the right place to advance his cause and hinder that of his rivals.
That is exactly what he did in the first race of the playoff semi-finals to fend off an intense challenge from Kevin Harvick and lock himself into next month’s championship-deciding race at Phoenix.
A Tyler Reddick wallstrike brought out the caution on lap 221 of 267, meaning the cars made a final visit to the pits for fresh Goodyears. Swift work from the Penske crew allowed Logano to jump leader Harvick and take the restart in the lead.
The low-power/high-downforce package had created pack racing in the early stages more akin to the superspeedways, but on this restart Logano and Harvick quickly formed a breakaway. While the much faster Harvick could close to within 0.5 seconds of Logano, the Stewart-haas Ford driver just could not find a way to draw alongside, despite backmarker traffic aiding his pursuit.
Logano would hold on to take his first victory since the Cup resumed following its COVID-19 hiatus, his third of the campaign and 26th of his career – and the chance to fight for a second title.
Harvick fended off late pressure from Alex Bowman for second, while Denny Hamlin recovered to 15th after a wallstrike in stage three that had left the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver a lap down.