After being eliminated from the playoffs just a week ago, Joey Logano turned his luck around and became the first driver to secure a spot in NASCAR’s championship finale.
Logano was out of the running when he left Charlotte Motor Speedway last Sunday. However, Alex Bowman’s car failed a post-race inspection, leading to Bowman’s disqualification and Logano’s reinstatement to the playoffs.
As the only two-time Cup champion still in the playoffs, Logano passed Daniel Suarez with five laps left in the race, earning his fourth career win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. This victory marks his second win in the playoffs, making him the first driver to qualify for the winner-take-all final four at Phoenix Raceway next month.
He achieved this win through a strong fuel-saving strategy.
“Man, we did some fuel mileage stuff, didn’t we?” Logano said. “What an incredible turn of events here the last week. It takes the whole team to do the fuel mileage stuff. Not just the engineers, spotter. It takes all of us to do it. Total team win.”
Logano had to fend off pole-sitter Christopher Bell, who led the race for a total of 156 laps. After a late pit stop, Bell fell 30 seconds behind Suarez. While he was trying to catch up, Logano managed to reach Suarez first.
Bell couldn’t catch Logano in the end and finished 0.662 seconds behind.
“We’re going to the championship four again!” Logano shouted on the frontstretch. He and Kyle Busch are the only active two-time champions, and Logano is now in a position to win a third Cup title.
Bell, who has been to the championship race for the last two years, looked disappointed after such a strong performance.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t think I’ve come to terms with this yet,” Bell said. “Just a bummer. I think everyone on this team did everything perfect. Just because I ran second today doesn’t mean I’m going to finish anywhere next week. You’re never safe in this deal, so we needed to win today and unfortunately, we didn’t.”
Suarez, who was out of the playoffs last week, finished third in a Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing. “It’s a little heartbreaking. I think we could have won it,” Suarez said.
William Byron from Hendrick Motorsports came in fourth as he tries to qualify for the championship race for the second year in a row.
“It’s going to take a win, I feel like, so we have to keep working for it and keep running up front,” Byron said. “If we run up front, it will do two things — we’ll be able to compete for a win and score a lot of points. We just have to keep running like this.”
Byron was followed by teammate Bowman in fifth place and then Martin Truex Jr. from Gibbs, who was eliminated from the playoffs in the first round during his last season of full-time NASCAR racing.
Denny Hamlin from Gibbs finished eighth after recovering from a tough day, and only four playoff drivers finished in the top 10.
“Not a clean day. That certainly sums it up. You’ll have that,” Hamlin said. “We did the best we could to get the best finish.”
Kyle Larson, who won the last two races at Las Vegas and last week at Charlotte, came back from being two laps down to finish 11th. He started Sunday as the top-seeded driver and is now third in the standings behind Logano and Bell.
“It was a messy, messy day. This was a long, hard-fought 11th-place finish,” Larson said. “We got the most we could out of the rest of the day.”
The remaining three playoff drivers had tough days as reigning Cup champion Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, and regular-season champion Tyler Reddick were all involved in the same early crash.
Logano is secured in the championship race, while Bell, Larson, and Byron are above the cutline. Hamlin, Reddick, Blaney, and Elliott are below the elimination line with two races left in this round.
