Joey Logano wins his way into NASCAR playoff second round; mixed results for others

The Quaker State 400 was certainly the race of survival everyone anticipated.

On one hand, Team Penske took control of the race early and often amongst all three of its drivers with Ryan Blaney ultimately pushing Joey Logano to the win on a day where Austin Cindric led the most of laps in his career.

On the other hand, Kyle Larson was their consistent main challenger early, ended up in a crash and fellow playoff driver Chase Briscoe drilled him.

As Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 crew chief Chris Gabehart put it afterwards, ‘the two safest places on the track here is 35th to 37th or on the other side of the track as everyone else.’ Larson, Briscoe and everyone else involved in a crash, including Martin Truex Jr., and Gabehart’s driver Denny Hamlin ended up not being safe.

Now, there’s two races left in this first round, at Watkins Glen and Bristol, to pick up the pieces.

A dangerous Logano

Joey Logano was in pain around this time last year.

Not literally but figuratively after his shock elimination in the first round after crashing out of the Bristol Night Race. He didn’t have a particularly competitive season last year and paid for it in the first round and nothing hurts the two-time champion more than not being mathematically eligible.

In the 10 years since this format was instituted, he has advanced to the championship race five times and to the Round of 8 every other year until last year.

He simply could not bear it.

“To be honest with you, when we got knocked out of the playoffs last year, it hurt a lot,” Logano said. “It stings the rest of the Playoffs every time you show up to the racetrack and you’re not in it. It hurts. It’s really frustrating. You just get mad. You just live mad for a little bit.

“That’s just what’s Playoffs are, right? That’s what drives you, motivates you to be better ’cause you don’t want the pain. You also want the thrill of the victory at the end.

“This is a good start, for sure.”

Logano can now spend the next two weeks focusing on nothing but earning additional playoff points, since those carry from round to round, and take risks without the potential consequence of elimination. He’s in no matter what.

And this is a dangerous Logano too, as his team is starting to feel themselves, and historically saves their best for the final weeks of the season.

“It just seems like we do it,” Logano said. “We just do. More times than not, excluding last year really, we’ve been able to level up when we need to level up. To be able to fire off your first race of the playoffs with a statement win, it’s key, right?

“We all talked about how wild card this round could be. We knew that the Penske cars would be strong on the superspeedway style type racetracks. We’ve been all year long. Unfortunately, we’ve been caught up in every possible wreck on these type of tracks.

“It’s nice to finally capitalize on the laps led, being towards the front, having a teammate lined up behind me there. He scored a ton of points today, too, being up there. A good day for Team Penske all the way through. Cindric did, too. A really special day for Penske to be able to score some good points and set themselves up pretty good for the Round of 12.”

Denny guesses wrong

Everything kind of went according to plan for Denny Hamlin on Sunday at Atlanta until it didn’t.

Actually, there was a lot of not according to plan all weekend.

Hamlin already started at the rear because of a faulty plug wire that manifested itself in qualifying. His car was too loose deep in traffic and every time he stared to make his way forward, he felt like his car was at risk of either being in a big crash, or outright causing it.

During the race, Gabehart told him something to the effect of ‘at some point, you just have to take the risk’ and that point was on the final restart when he began marching through the top-20 only to get collected in the final lap crash with Ross Chastain, Bubba Wallace, Harrison Burton and Cody Ware.

“I thought there would be a bigger wreck, you know, just trying to play the numbers, figured there would be more incidences than there was,” Hamlin said after the race. “I mean, there were still some playoff guys in some stuff, but overall just, I didn’t care about what anyone else did, just tried to get 20 points which is a mid to high-teen finish. Just trying to get through this round, that’s it.”

Gabehart echoed, after the race, what he said during the race that the car was ill, but everyone’s car was ill, and that he felt they were largely too conservative and just needed to race it out.

Now they have two races, at The Glen and Bristol, to overcome yet another setback following their massive engine penalty from last month just to advance into the Round of 12.

Not a big shakeup

Despite a certain degree of chaos, no one is really in an unsurmountable position right now. Harrison Burton nearly played this race as perfect as possible and was set to come away with a top-15 until he collided into the same crash that eliminated Hamlin.

It stings.

“I saw the 23 get sideways and checked up, and I don’t know how I got sideways, hit the wall real hard and got hit again and it’s just unfortunate,” Burton said. “It wasn’t a race winning day but were going to have a decent points day and would have headed to Watkins Glen in a pretty good position in the points.

“I don’t know where we’re at but I guess we’re going to go to the Glen with a lot of ground to make up.”

But really, 15 back isn’t that much, although for a team that has only scored the 34th most points this year, it probably is.

It’s kind of the same thing for Briscoe, who is only 20 points below the cutline, and was a top-20 team all season even before needing to win the Southern 500 to advance into the playoffs in the final hour.

“I’m excited for the challenge, truthfully,” Briscoe said. “I think we all knew when the playoffs started that this was going to be the one race where you could really dig yourself a big hole. It’s unfortunate that we dug ourselves in a big hole, but if there was two racetracks out of the 10, those are two of the ones that I would definitely pick to go run in a must-win situation, so hopefully we can do it.”

Maybe he can pull off a repeat.

“Bristol, we’ve started in the top three of four there the last three times we went,” Briscoe said. “We’ve obviously had really good speed. We tested there about a month-and-a-half ago, and then the road courses we’ve always been really good. With the fall off that they’re talking about at Watkins Glen, I think we’re gonna be in good shape. The slick, wore out, where we’re slipping and sliding around is typically when we’re our strongest, so I feel like we can win any of the two.”

Meanwhile, Martin Truex Jr., involved in the lap 206 crash and now facing a 18 point deficit is just in the same place he found himself in this time last year when he was below the cutline twice before still advancing to the Round of 8.

At the end of the day, Briscoe and Burton were longshots, Truex was the lowest seeded driver and that’s where they still stand after one race of three to make the Round of 12.

Some good days too

While no one is safe with two more unpredictable races coming up, the trio of Alex Bowman, Austin Cindric and Daniel Suarez still gave themselves a great deal of positive energy and a cushion this round.

Suarez had a chance to win, just not getting the pushes he needed from teammate Ross Chastain, and ultimately finished second in his return trip to the place where he won earlier this season in dramatic fashion.

“No, definitely not satisfied. I am happy with it, but not satisfied,” Suarez said. “I lost my pusher, my teammate. He was doing a great job, and I felt like we were going to have a great shot at it. Ross was doing an amazing job of pushing, and I don’t know if he got a flat tire or something, but once I lost him, I knew it was going to be tough. But, that is part of racing, right? …

“It was nice to run strong today, but when you are that close and obviously we had a good shot, it’s never too fun.”

Maybe not but going from one point above the cutline to 22 is something worth celebrating.

But Cindric and Bowman really improved their fortunes, running in the top-10 all race, and scoring 19 and 16 stage points respectively. Bowman was on the bubble entering the race and leaves Atlanta with a 27 point advantage above it.

Cindric went from two points above the cutline to 27.

Bowman may be racing for his job based on a narrative from earlier in the week and this is the kind of result that could change those vibes around.

“Yeah, it was obviously a really good points day and a good day, overall, after the last month of so. Made a couple of moves there during that third-to-last run that just cost us a lot of track position, and we had to restart 13th there that second-to-last run. Obviously got a lot of it back, but couldn’t get it all back. I would have much rather been sitting in victory lane, but I just didn’t put myself in the best position at the end to be able to do that.

“We had a great No. 48 Ally Chevy. It drove great all day. Little bummed, but definitely a good day for this team.”

Cindric does not have the resume as his two championship winning teammates but advancing to the second round will go a long way to building towards that expectation as well.

“I’m just glad a Team Penske car won it,” Cindric said. “We’ve come to so many of these speedways with cars that are capable of winning races and I’m proud of Joey and the guys to get it done. Obviously, Ryan and I worked really well together to get a ton of points to start.

“We just got off cycle there with a bad pit stop and just really took a long time to get back up to the front of the field. I feel like I could have made some better decisions on the last couple of restarts, but a solid effort all around with all of the challenges of pack racing.”

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