MADISON, Ill. — The next race is always the most important, particularly in the playoffs, but for reigning Cup champion Joey Logano it is what comes after Sunday’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway that makes this weekend so critical.
Logano enters this weekend three points below the cutline held by Shane van Gisbergen.
This 1.25-mile track across the Mississippi River from St. Louis has been good to Logano, who won the track’s inaugural Cup race in 2022 and finished in the top five in all three starts.
The NASCAR circuit will race at the 1.25-mile oval for the first time in the playoffs.
What follows this weekend, though, is Bristol. Four playoff drivers will be eliminated after that race. Logano has not finished in the top 20 in the last five races at Bristol and was eliminated there in the 2023 playoffs.
“Bristol is something we’ve talked a lot about already,” Logano said this week. “On the concrete with the Next Gen car hasn’t been our wheelhouse.”
A victory at World Wide Technology Raceway would send Logano into the next round and eliminate any pressure at Bristol. Should he struggle this weekend, the pressure will build at Bristol.
Austin Cindric seeks to repeat his 2024 win at the 1.25-mile track.
“At some point in the playoffs your back will be up against the wall and it will be do-or-die,” Logano said. “ … that’s why Gateway this weekend is an ultra important weekend. The good news is, more times than not, we excel in those types of situations. We usually can rise to the occasion.
“With that said, we’ve seen the other side before too. We’ve been through it enough, but we know how to handle it.”
Logano often excels in the playoffs. Fifteen of his 37 Cup wins (40.5%) have come in the playoffs. After winning once in the regular season last year, he won three times in the playoffs to claim his third series crown.
World Wide Technology Raceway could help Logano add to his win total.
“It just seems like for us right now most of the time our cars are pretty fast at the flat 1-mile type racetracks, whether that’s Phoenix, Gateway, Loudon, Richmond kind of falls in there, but it’s quite a bit of a different track as well, but it’s similar speed-wise. It seems like we have a pretty good handle on that type of thing and that type of track, so hopefully that’s the case again.”
Reigning Cup champion Joey Logano is below the cutline heading into Sunday’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway.
One challenge for Logano and the rest of the field is that Goodyear will have new left-side and right-side tires this weekend. Those tires came from a June tire test with Erik Jones, Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski.
“It doesn’t seem like we’ve had a lot of fall off there in the past,” Logano said. “I don’t know what this tire will bring — possibly more — but with the lack of tire fall off that’s been there in the past, the strategy, if you get a caution that falls in the middle of a stage, it really jumbles it up like it did last year and it can happen again.”