Joey Logano was not a NASCAR Cup Collection championship favourite when the common season led to early September. Or at the least he wasn’t statistically.
Logano ended the common season fifteenth within the championship standings with a Nashville Superspeedway victory that clinched his spot within the postseason. The remainder of his physique of labor by 26 races included eight top-10 finishes, 264 laps led, and 7 playoff factors.
However Logano is the primary driver locked into the Championship 4 after what some may name a stunning victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Did the No. 22 crew overachieve in incomes a spot within the championship race?
“Perhaps in your thoughts,” Logano laughed after Sunday’s win. “I don’t know. For us, our purpose at all times is to make it and we really imagine we will. There have been a few years the place, by the stats, it doesn’t look too good. However we’ve been in a position to capitalize when it issues, and within the playoffs, we simply flip the wick up.
“I don’t know what precisely that’s, but it surely simply occurs. So, you have a look at our playoff wins and our historical past versus our common season wins, it’s type of loopy percentage-wise what that’s.
Logano loves the postseason, which is one thing he was fast to remind everybody of again in September. The time of 12 months when the stress is at an all-time excessive is the place Logano thrives and he was as assured as ever for the reset.
Las Vegas was Logano’s second win of the postseason. He opened issues up by successful at Atlanta Motor Speedway to clinch a spot within the Spherical of 12.
Via the primary seven postseason races, Logano has a mean end of 14.28 with three top-10 finishes. And if he had been so as to add a 3rd championship, Logano would stand alone as the motive force with probably the most championships who remains to be a full-time energetic Cup Collection competitor.
“We simply seem to be when the playoffs come round, we do a extremely good job,” Logano continued. “I’m very happy with that, however I additionally at all times consider what Roger [Penske] says, and it’s considered one of my favourite issues that he ever mentioned: ‘Don’t journey by yourself press clippings. Don’t get too over your skis.’
“The job’s not achieved but. We gotta preserve staring out the windshield and preserve our heads down and grinding for the subsequent few weeks to get ourselves a bonus.”
Paul Wolfe turned Logano’s crew chief in 2020, and along with successful the 2022 sequence championship, the duo has 12 wins collectively during the last 5 seasons. With the victory Sunday, Wolfe is now the winningest energetic crew chief (at 41) within the Cup Collection after breaking a tie with Rodney Childers (40).
Wolfe and Logano have been one of the profitable crew chief/driver pairings over the previous few years.
“On the subject of stress conditions, he loves that, and he’s clearly actually good at it,” Wolfe mentioned of his driver. “There are definitely drivers that, below stress, can’t carry out.
“We’re all people. We’re not robots. So, the psychological facet, the emotion facet of it, it’s actual, and I’ve seen it play out. You may watch it all through the storage with completely different drivers and I feel if something, these conditions make him carry out at one other stage, and I do know that’s exhausting to know how that would even be doable. You are feeling like drivers are getting all they will it doesn’t matter what the scenario however … he’s simply in a position to get to a different stage and the best drivers can try this below stress.”
In two of their three wins, Logano needed to save gasoline. Nashville went to 5 overtimes earlier than it was determined and Wolfe made the decision to stretch the mileage within the ultimate stage at Las Vegas whereas many others, together with the heavy hitters, pitted. For Wolfe, these are examples of Logano’s expertise to proceed to make lap time regardless of a high-pressure scenario.
“We’re not at all times the quickest automobile, however I really feel like as a crew, we’re top-of-the-line groups, if not the perfect within the storage, at placing all the pieces collectively and that’s what this sport is about,” Wolfe mentioned. “The quickest automobile very seldom wins these races. So, we strive to verify we’ve coated off on all the pieces. In the end, we wish the quickest automobile we will placed on the racetrack, and we strive to do this each week, however in case you don’t, you possibly can’t not do the remainder of it.
“And doing the remainder of it on the highest stage is what permits us to have the ability to do issues like we did (Sunday).”
Logano and Wolfe had been final within the Championship 4 in 2022, once they received the finale to win the championship. Logano has three wins at Phoenix Raceway.
