What NASCAR playoff pressure?
Martinsville winner Logano looks toward finale
Joey Logano corrected himself nearly as quickly as he righted his car to secure both the win at Martinsville Speedway and a berth in the Championship 4 last Sunday.
“The pressure for those two races is off,” Logano told USA TODAY. “Maybe, ‘the pressure is off ’ is the wrong thing to say. It’s shifted to the one race for the big reward at the end.”
Logano became the first driver to lock up one of the four slots to compete for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship on Nov. 18 at HomesteadMiami Speedway with his victory at Martinsville. The three other slots will be up for grabs over the next two races, the first coming Sunday at the AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN).
Logano bumped reigning series champion Martin Truex Jr. coming toward the checkered flag after the pair raced side-by-side on the previous lap. The collision spun out Truex’s No. 78 Toyota, but Logano was able to keep his No. 22 Team Penske Ford under control enough for his first Martinsville win, second win of the season and 20th win of his Cup Career.
Truex, who finished third behind Denny Hamlin, called the bump that knocked him out of the lead a “cheap shot” after the race.
“That was the classic bump-andrun,” Logano said after the race. “That was the move that our sport and Martinsville in particular was built on. I think I owe it to my race team to do everything I can to win a race, get another shot at winning a championship. That’s my job.”
Logano, 28, has now made the Championship 4 three times, although he was nowhere near it last year. He finished 17th in the standings and failed to make the playoffs when he was penalized after his lone 2017 victory — in the spring race at Richmond Raceway — was ruled ineligible for playoff consideration.
“The recovery really started at the end of last season and continued as this season kicked off,” Logano said. “I think we got locked into one way of doing things that worked in the past and we really didn’t want to change. That put us behind the learning curve.”
Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway is a return to the 11⁄ 2- mile ovals that make up the bulk of the schedule, and the racing is likely to be much different from the tight, close-quarter style that Martinsville has become famous for.
Seven other drivers — Kyle Busch, Truex, Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch, Chase Elliott, Clint Bowyer and Aric Almirola — have an opportunity Sunday and the following week at the Can-Am 500 at ISM Raceway near Phoenix to secure a final four berth.
Kyle Busch, who currently has the points lead in the playoff standings, won the spring race at Texas in early April, edging Harvick at the finish line. The roles were reversed one month earlier in Phoenix when Harvick topped Busch during the spring race at ISM Raceway. Harvick also won last year’s playoff race at Texas after Truex led a race-high 107 laps.
All three drivers — who also hold the top three spots in the playoff standings — are likely to be huge factors again this weekend, but the track remains unpredictable after the surface was repaved and the banking was lowered in turns 1 and 2 before the 2017 spring race.
Busch said the repave hasn’t posed any problems for him, but he is looking forward to the surface getting more “racey” with time.
“That place has always been fast, and it’s always been one-groovish around the bottom, and so far it’s kind of what we’ve got with the repave,” Busch said last weekend at Martinsville.
“It was a good place for us before the repave, and now since the repave, I think it’s been a pretty good place for us as well.”