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<\/p>\nLast October\u2019s Charlotte Motor Speedway race weekend swept Joey Logano through a dramatic range of highs and lows.<\/p>\n
Logano finished eighth in a race won by Kyle Larson, and that finish booted Logano from the Cup playoffs. He was \u201cbummed,\u201d as he described the moments after the race.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI was bummed that we were just a little short, but it is what it is,\u201d Logano said Saturday. \u201cThat\u2019s how I am at the end of the race. It is what it is. I can\u2019t change it now, and you just have to keep looking out the windshield, and we went home. We had a fairly normal evening. Then I got a call, and it was like, \u2018Hey, honey, you ain\u2019t gonna believe it. We\u2019re back in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Back at the race track, Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman had been disqualified by NASCAR, and that change lifted Logano from oblivion to playoff life.<\/p>\n
His race toward the championship refreshed by Bowman\u2019s misfortune, Logano took full advantage, winning the next week at Las Vegas to lock into the final four and then winning the season finale at Phoenix to notch his third Cup title.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, the next seven days after that changed everything because we went from out to in to winning Vegas and in the Championship 4 and winning our third title, so just a quick turn of events, but that\u2019s NASCAR racing for you,\u201d Logano said. \u201cIt\u2019s unpredictable. Things can change really, really fast. You just have to keep rolling with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Joey Logano driving behind Denny Hamlin in practice. David Jensen – Getty Images<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to this year, and Logano finds himself in troubled waters once again. The playoff field will be cut to eight after Sunday\u2019s race, and Logano will start the race eighth in points, 13 above the cutline. Perilous territory.<\/p>\n
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Things are tight around the cutline. Chase Briscoe is seventh, 21 points above the line. Ross Chastain, in ninth, is 13 below the line. Bubba Wallace is 26 back, and Tyler Reddick is 29th.<\/p>\n
Logano will have an interest in keeping up with the progress of the drivers who share space with him around the cutline.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want everything, all the information I can possibly get said to me,\u201d he said. \u201cI think everybody knows you make better decisions when you have all the data, and we\u2019re asked to make decisions in the heat of the battle live. There\u2019s no time to talk it through in a boardroom. We\u2019ve got to make the decision at that moment, so the more prepared we can be the better, but also understanding what the situation is, what\u2019s going on around me and what I have to do inside the race car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Logano races against history. Ford hasn\u2019t had a win in the CMS Roval race since Ryan Blaney scored in 2018. Logano has not won the Roval race, although he has six top-10 finishes at the track and is the leader in that category.<\/p>\n
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To date, the playoffs have been a mixed bag for Logano. He was 20th at Darlington, fifth at Gateway, fifth at Bristol, fourth at New Hampshire and 21st last week at Kansas. Team Penske remains solidly in the hunt for another championship, with Ryan Blaney, the winner at Loudon, guaranteed of a spot in the round of eight and Austin Cindric still alive (although barely), 48 points below the cutline.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal when you start the season is to win the championship, and it takes a lot of stepping stones to get to that place,\u201d Logano said. \u201cOne of the largest ones is just getting to the Championship 4. That\u2019s the one closest to the championship, so getting to the Championship 4 is so hard to do, so when we won that race [at Las Vegas], you automatically know, \u2018Gosh, we\u2019re in it. We\u2019ve got a chance.\u2019 And then you know that you\u2019ve got a couple weeks advantage on everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe excitement is real and then it goes straight back to the pressure automatically kicks in. Maybe 30 minutes after the race and the adrenaline starts to come down, you\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019ve got to start working on Phoenix now.\u2019 It starts happening really fast because you\u2019re that close. As great as it is to make the Championship 4, it equally sucks to not win it\u2014to get that far and not accomplish the goal. That hurts so bad, so you just want to make sure you have everything ready.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last October\u2019s Charlotte Motor Speedway race weekend swept Joey Logano through a dramatic range of highs and lows.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[15892,655,5263,92363,116527,425,99],"class_list":["post-202423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-alex-bowman","tag-joey-logano","tag-kyle-larson","tag-logano","tag-logano-teeters","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}