Team Penske driver Joey Logano is not only the defending series champion but also the defending race winner at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. And he comes into the weekend especially energized after a dramatic, final lap extension of his Playoff life last week at the Charlotte ROVAL where he solidified his 2025 title shot with a 20th-place finish, one position ahead of his closest challenger Trackhouse Racing\u2019s Ross Chastain.<\/p>\n
With new championship \u201clife\u201d \u2013 so to speak \u2013 the four-time Las Vegas race winner would prefer not to make this three-race penultimate round of the Playoffs quite as suspenseful. But, Logano said Saturday, he doesn\u2019t really care what scenario it takes to advance. As long as he advances.<\/p>\n
The driver of the Team Penske No. 22 Ford says the result of his team\u2019s ability to overcome tough odds is because it is made up of resilient tough people.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do feel a little bit more is on the line [in the Round of 8], the intensity rachets up and you feel that,\u201d he allowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I don\u2019t care how we get there,\u201d continued Logano, who starts this round ranked eighth among the eight drivers (-24 points below the cutoff line).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been that way. I\u2019ve always said it\u2019s about the big trophy at the end of the day. That\u2019s all that matters and how we do it doesn\u2019t matter, whether it\u2019s no wins, five wins, I don\u2019t care. If it\u2019s close to the cut line or easy, it doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s all about winning the [championship] trophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy message [to the team] was basically, \u2018hey, we\u2019ve made it this far, let\u2019s not waste the opportunity.\u2019 We\u2019ve made it to the round of eight and t\u2019s a great accomplishment but doesn\u2019t mean anything if you don\u2019t get to the championship four. And if you make it to the championship four, it doesn\u2019t matter if you don\u2019t win the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Penske driver Joey Logano is not only the defending series champion but also the defending race winner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,717,10221,5793,86140,720,634,582,8994,721,722,82,5794],"class_list":["post-206218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-charlotte","tag-ford","tag-joey-logano","tag-las-vegas-motor-speedway","tag-motor","tag-nascar","tag-racing","tag-ross-chastain","tag-series","tag-speedway","tag-sports","tag-team-penske"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}