Joey Logano gets statement win at Charlotte

ByBOB POCKRASS
October 12, 2015, 11:38 AM

— -- CONCORD, N.C. -- The common theme in the second year of this Chase for the Sprint Cup format has been drivers talking about what they learned in the first year of NASCAR's new elimination-style format.

And the most popular answer is the same thing that many believed when the Chase format was first announced -- leave nothing to chance in the Contender Round finale at Talladega.

Joey Logano learned that last year when he opened this round -- some call it the second round, some call it a quarterfinal round -- with a victory at Kansas Speedway. He could breathe easy the next two races, knowing that his performance the next week at Charlotte didn't really matter and a wreck at Talladega wouldn't ruin his championship hopes.

Logano repeated that feat Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which this year flipped spots with Kansas as far as the order in the Contender Round. He led 227 of the 334 laps in a race punctuated by some of the strongest cars having issues.

"Because the pressure that a lot of these drivers are going to have on them, and we had on us when this race started, to get through to the next round is big," Logano said.

"To be able to have that pressure off of us and to be able to relax and enjoy this next round -- don't get me wrong, there's still two trophies to win -- but to have that pressure off and be able to have our batteries charged up and ready to attack when we get to the next round, that's going to pay big dividends."

Logano clearly deserved this one. None of the drivers who finished second through fifth -- Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin and Kurt Busch (all Chase drivers) -- led a lap. In fact, the only driver to lead more than 22 laps besides Logano was Matt Kenseth, who finished 42nd after tangling with Ryan Newman once and the wall several times.

The 227 laps Logano led were the most laps led by a fall Charlotte winner since Ernie Irvan in 1993.

"When you can beat the [No.] 4 car [of defending champion Harvick] any day, any time, that's a big deal for us," said Logano team owner Roger Penske. "And I think that it was good that we could be at least on a level playing field with him today."

The field is no longer equal for the Chase field, which will be cut from 12 to eight after Talladega, with Chase drivers who win automatically advancing to the next round and then the remaining spots based on points.

Last year, Kyle Busch finished third and fifth in the first two races and then found himself missing the next round because of a wreck at Talladega. Harvick has just a 13-point cushion on ninth -- not a lot of breathing room after one race, even though he sits second.

"It doesn't change anything," Harvick said. "We're just going to go to Kansas and keep our head down and grind away."

Grinding is the way most of the Chase drivers finished in the top-10. Truex started 15th, and his Colorado-based team could leave somewhat happy as the only team that had to scramble for hotel rooms after the race was postponed from Saturday night to Sunday. Hamlin had to go to a backup battery during the race and just seemed content to hold a top-5 spot much of the day.

Carl Edwards, in sixth, didn't suffer significant damage after contact with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and had a respectable finish. Jeff Gordon (eighth) and Brad Keselowski (ninth) wrestled their beasts of cars into good enough days.

But other Chase drivers weren't so fortunate. Newman was 15th after the contact with Kenseth. Kyle Busch (20th) was the unfortunate recipient of damage from a bonehead move by Kyle Larson, as Larson tried to cut on to pit road under caution way too late. Earnhardt was 28th, but like Busch, wasn't just mad about contact with another driver but contact with a wall as they thought there was oil in the upper groove.

Logano never went to the middle or upper grooves because he didn't need to.

"I was pretty much like a catfish today," Logano said. "I was just pretty much on the bottom. ... When someone comes over the radio and says, 'Hey, they're talking about oil in the middle of the race track,' then you probably shouldn't run in the middle of the racetrack, especially in the position that we were in."

That position was the position of don't screw it up, don't take a car capable of leading 227 laps and lead only 226. Don't end up like Kenseth (32 points behind Keselowski for the current final Chase cutoff spot), Earnhardt (19 points behind), Kyle Busch (10 points) or Newman (six points ).

At age 25, Logano earned his fourth victory of the season and a series-high ninth over the past two years. He had only three wins before the 2014 season, as he continues to blossom driving for Penske.

He seems to get more and more clutch each year -- he opened the 2015 season with the Daytona 500 victory -- and just when it might seem like the right time to doubt him, he comes up big.

It's the opposite for Busch, who has never won in October and who has only one of his 33 Sprint Cup victories in a race in the Chase (and that was one where he didn't even qualify for the Chase).

"My guys, all the work that they put into these things, they don't deserve to be put in these situations year in, year out," Busch said. "But we are for some reason. It's tough and we're going to have to battle through with what we've got right now."

As the rest of the teams have to battle, Logano will be able to sleep. His crew chief will take the car he won with and not run it again the rest of this year.

"There's such consistency in our manufacturing process that this car probably won't be seen for the rest of the Chase," Logano crew chief Todd Gordon said. "We'll continue down the path that we've got because we know we're building better race cars every day.

"Rather than try to recycle something and run equal to it, we're going to try to build something better."

You hear that, Harvick? Logano is going to try to bring something better. He already, though, has something better. He has a ticket to the Eliminator Round.