Joey Logano was already moving on from believing he had been eliminated from the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs when he started to hear there was a potential issue during post-race inspection at the Charlotte Roval.
The two-time Cup Series champion admitted in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s race that it was hard not to be angry about his predicament. Logano missed advancing to the Round of 8 by four points. He went from being in control of the points gap to seeing it slip away as he stalled inside the top 10 after Tyler Reddick came through the field on fresh tires to not only erase the deficit, but put Logano behind him.
But a few hours later, Logano was back in championship contention when NASCAR disqualified Alex Bowman. The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was determined to be too light in post-race inspection.
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“I was starting to move forward,” Logano said Tuesday of his emotions. “You guys are there literally the moment [we] get out of the race car, so it takes a little bit to get your thoughts collected. Honestly, by the time I was driving home (with) my wife, we were talking about something that was far more important than what we were doing at the racetrack. My mind was already starting to shift to what were the next moves and getting over the race.
“Then I started hearing the rumors from there and my phone started to ring shortly after.”
Logano was as surprised as anyone by the news. It is not unusual to hear rumors of an issue inspection that turns out to be nothing when things settle.
It wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary for Logano to hear the same thing happened with Bowman’s car. And NASCAR did give Bowman’s team a chance to make weight by going through, as is the process, of fueling the car, purging the water system and adding water, and then going back over the scales. But it didn’t change anything.
“Typically, by the time you roll the car off the scales and you give them the opportunity to put weight in… it’s fine,” Logano said. “But in this case, that wasn’t the case, and I’m like, ‘Well, would we be in?’ That’s the first question you have to ask. Obviously, the answer was yes.
“Then you’re still cautiously optimistic because you’re thinking, well, there will probably be an appeal and if there is, we may not know until later. So, you keep going on with your life and preparing for the next race. Obviously, the news came out yesterday that they’re not appealing, so we move on into the Round of 8 and off we go.”
With his second chance at life, Logano begins the Round of 11 sitting last on the playoff grid. He is out by 11 points.
However, he is a three-time winner at Las Vegas. The last time Logano qualified for the Championship 4, he did so by winning at Las Vegas.
Furthermore, the last three years in which Logano made it to the championship race (2022, 2020, and 2018), he did so by winning the first race in the Round of 8. And he’s working on extending a streak of being in the Championship 4 in each even year of the elimination era (2014, ’16, ’18, ’20, and ’22).
“The positives are, we’ve been steadily getting better and improving throughout the season to where we are now,” Logano said. “I feel confident in the speed we have in our car. The stats may not look like it, we may look like we’re underdogs from the outside looking in, but internally, we feel very confident as a 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 that you get in there and anything can happen at Phoenix.
“The goal right now is looking at the next three races, and how do we maximize that? We can point our way in – we’re only 11 out. So that’s not a lot of points by any means; it can happen very quickly. One race at a time. Right now, the focus is Vegas and we’ll try to maximize the day there.”