Joey Logano was already back home after Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Roval elimination race Sunday evening, unwinding by playing foosball with a friend in his shop. Some tabletop soccer helped distract from the resignation that his championship eligibility in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs had evaporated.
That’s when Logano’s phone notifications started to build.
Those pings eventually let Logano in on the scuttlebutt that had been trickling out of post-race inspection. The Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 Chevrolet driven by Alex Bowman was found to be underweight. Bowman was disqualified and ruled out of the postseason picture; Logano was back into the playoff field, advancing with an 11th-hour reprieve.
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Logano detailed what he termed a “wild roller coaster of emotions” after Sunday’s turn of events, shedding light on his renewed outlook during a Tuesday media availability with his quest for a third Cup Series title freshly restored. The 34-year-old veteran had mustered a valiant points-gathering day in Sunday’s Round of 12 finale but ended up nine points shy of advancing with the initial, unofficial results. When inspection ended, Logano was slotted back in as the eighth and final driver still alive on the postseason grid.
“I was starting to move forward,” Logano said, recounting the time between the checkered flag and the results being made official. “You get there literally the moment we get out of the race car. It takes a little bit to get your thoughts collected, and honestly, by the time I was driving home, my wife and I were talking about something far more important than what we were doing at the race track. My mind was already starting to shift on what were the next moves and kind of getting over the race. Then I started hearing the rumors from there, and the phone started to ring shortly after.”
Those rumors swirled around potential delays in the inspection process. “Usually, nothing happens,” Logano said about the conjecture, which he took with a grain of cautious optimism. But the questions and uncertainty started to gain momentum, and that snowball effect caught his attention.
“I was like, ‘Something’s up here,”” Logano told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio earlier Tuesday morning. “Hang on a second. Something’s going on. I need to figure it out because a lot of people are calling all at the same time.”
That optimism was rewarded, and it stuck Monday after Hendrick Motorsports elected not to appeal the penalty. Logano now heads to Sunday’s Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) with loftier goals beyond adding a fourth victory at the 1.5-mile Nevada oval. Logano said that playoff eligibility intact or not, his approach stays the same: “You go out there and you attack.”
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Logano won the playoff-opening race at Atlanta Motor Speedway last month, and he led laps in three of the four races that followed, though his finishes did not produce a top-10 result in that stretch. He got back on course at the Charlotte Roval, finishing eighth and piling up 18 stage points in a 47-point total effort. That grit in a pressure-packed situation, combined with the speed in his No. 22 Ford, have been encouraging as Logano sets a target on reaching the championship stage in the Nov. 10 season finale at Phoenix Raceway.
“The stats may not look like it. 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,” said Logano, who is 11 points below the provisional elimination line. “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 do we maximize that. We can point our way in. We’re only 11 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.”
Two Team Penske drivers have reached the Round of 8, with Logano joining defending Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney among those drivers still vying for the Bill France Cup. Penske teammate Austin Cindric failed to advance from the Round of 12 group, despite a fourth-place finish at the Roval.
Logano (2022) and Blaney (2023) have won the last two Cup Series titles, and the blueprint for Team Penske’s success has been a performance uptick as the season draws to its close. It’s a plan that Logano hopes to replicate this year.
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“Trends are trends for a reason, right?” Logano said. “I don’t know why or what that is, but it does seem like Team Penske does a good job rising to the occasion when it matters during the playoffs. I feel like that happened a little sooner this year. We started to make that turnaround a little bit quicker than last year, and still, last year, Blaney was able to win the championship. Yeah, I feel great about it because we’ve done this before. Like I said before, from the outside looking in, you look at it and say, ‘Well, they haven’t had as many top fives. They haven’t had as many top 10s. They haven’t been as competitive.’ Who cares? We’ve lived this story many times before. Yeah, would it be easier if you had more playoff points? Yeah, but you know what? You win this weekend, and you’re sitting as the favorite going into Phoenix, so it changes like that, and that’s with the playoff system that we have.
“Every point matters throughout the whole season. I’m not discounting that, but you have to be your absolute best at this point in the season or else those points don’t even matter, so I feel confident in our team that we’ve got that. We’re still alive. We’re still going and that’s the name of the game in these playoffs.”
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