DARLINGTON, S.C.: With 10 appearances in the last 11 NASCAR Cup Playoffs, Joey Logano realizes success is based on survival.
The two-time Cup champion was eliminated following a wreck at Bristol Motor Speedway—the final race in Round 1.
While his teammate Ryan Blaney was able to run the table with wins at Talladega Superspeedway and Martinsville Speedway en route to his first Cup title, Team Penske speed came a little too late for Logano.
“Hopefully we can bring a little bit more to the table,” said Logano who is currently 15th in the standings. “It seems like our cars are getting faster here recently, so I’m excited about that part. It seems like our cars are getting more and more competitive and we’re starting to peak at the right time. So it seems like it’s a little sooner than last year, which is good. I hope that’s the case.
“If you look at the 12 (Blaney) last year, it really wasn’t in the first round that they looked any better. It was really as they got to the second, the third round when it really started to show that their speed picked up and we were just too late. We were already knocked out at that point. So you just got to survive long enough to make sure the speed’s there if it matters.”
With just one win this season and seven Playoff points, Logano doesn’t have much of a cushion to carry him through the rounds. His five wrecks in the first 25 races equal his total DNFs for 2023. Logano was running at the finish of Bristol—the only venue returning this year to Round 1, which has changed dramatically with the inclusion of Atlanta Motor Speedway and Watkins Glen.
The redesign of Atlanta has turned the 1.5-mile track into more of a superspeedway—a style of racing Logano does not welcome in the Playoffs. Drivers experienced dramatic tire wear at Bristol despite using the same compounds the year prior. And the Glen, a newcomer to the Playoffs, isn’t the road course of old with additional rumble strips in Turn 1 and turtles kerbs through the Bus Stop.
“I get we got to have a variety of all the race tracks within our playoff schedule,” Logano said. “I think one is plenty just because we know what speedway racing is. Look at last week. I mean, just things could be going well and then everyone ends up in a wad. And you say look at the last 20 of them.
“Bristol sounds like the one that is the most predictable but it is not now. If you guys remember last time we went there, tires wore out really fast and nothing is going to be different. So you’ve got to assume it’s going to look the same with a lot of tire wear and when you think of it from that lens they’re all kind of wild cards to that first round.
“Watkins Glen is gonna be a lot different than what it was last time we were there with the rumble strips through the bus stop being different and you know it’s gonna take something different from your car, the tire sounds like it’s going to wear out there too.”
Logano believes that preparation will be key to getting a jump on the weekend and the competition.
“A lot of unknowns and things that we’ll have to figure out as a team really fast with no practice essentially, limited amounts of practice where you can’t adjust anything to your car substantially to try to combat some of the things you may be fighting with a tire wear scenario at both Watkins Glen and Bristol.
“So I hope you make the right decisions before you get there and then try to figure out how to execute with it once you get there.”
Certainly, Logano’s departure following the first round last year was a shocker. Since the postseason was redesigned in 2014, the No. 22 team has advanced to the Championship 4 round five times.
Could crew chief Paul Wolfe change the team’s strategy to avoid a quick exit this season?
“It kind of depends on what your position is as you go into the next race,” Logano said. “What do you have to do to accomplish the ultimate goal, which is always getting to the next round first. How do we get to the next round? I think the strategy at this point is pretty apparent to most and it’s easy to say, hard to do. The first round has a lot of interesting racetracks in it, but a lot of times if you just have races without issue, you usually can get through that one.
“It gets a little harder each time. And we’re not going in with a lot of playoff points like I’d like to have, but we have a few. There’s really not anyone that has a whole bunch more outside of the first few cars and obviously the 15 that the regular season champion will get. But yeah, it doesn’t mean that that’s a cakewalk for them either.”
Logano appeared to struggle to start the 2024 season. The team appeared to turn the tide following a two-day test at North Wilkesboro Speedway that not only helped the No. 22 team but the Penske organization as a whole. After Logano won the All-Star Race in May—and led all but one lap—his teammates won two of the next four races.
On June 2, Austin Cindric scored the victory at Gateway International after Blaney ran out of gas from the lead. Two weeks later at Iowa Speedway, Blaney won the inaugural event. Logano’s first points win came at Nashville Superspeedway on June 30—his 33rd career win. Other than the Charlotte Roval, the 34-year-old racer has won at 10 of the next 11 tracks including this weekend’s Darlington Raceway.
“We’ve just got to keep our heads down and dig and do our own thing, focus on what makes the 22 teamwork,” Logano said. “We’ve gone on those runs before during the playoffs and it’s something that we’ve kind of become accustomed to for the most part at Team Penske.”
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