Neglect “Sliced Bread,” if you happen to haven’t already. Name him “Houdini.”
On Sunday on the Charlotte Motor Speedway Street Course, defending champion Joey Logano made yet one more nice escape from the Spherical of 12 within the NASCAR Cup Collection Playoffs.
When Denny Hamlin handed Ross Chastain within the Flip 7 hairpin on the ultimate lap of the Financial institution of America ROVAL 400, Logano and Chastain have been tied for the ultimate berth within the Spherical of 8.
Logano, nevertheless, held the tiebreaker primarily based on finest end within the spherical. Logano ran fourth within the Spherical of 12 opener at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Chastain’s finest was ninth in that very same race.
Determined instances name for determined measures. Chastain charged the ultimate nook in a last-ditch try and move Hamlin for the purpose he wanted to advance to the following spherical. The contact spun each automobiles on the exit from Flip 17.
Chastain drove backwards throughout the end line as Logano handed him to safe the ultimate spot within the Spherical of 8 by 4 factors.
For the second straight season, Logano wanted assist to outlive the Spherical of 12. Final 12 months, it was a disqualification to Alex Bowman that saved Logano within the Playoffs. On Sunday, Chastain made two important pit highway errors that doomed his possibilities and elevated Logano’s.
The second of these errors, a dashing penalty exiting his pit field on Lap 87, compelled Chastain to remain on the observe for the ultimate 22 laps. By the top of that stint, along with his tires degraded, Chastain was unable to maintain Hamlin behind him when it mattered most.
Final 12 months, granted a reprieve when Bowman’s automobile was DQ’d for failing to satisfy minimal weight, Logano proceeded to win the next week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and instantly set his sights on the Championship 4 occasion at Phoenix Raceway.
His subsequent triumph within the Arizona desert gave Logano his third sequence championship. After Sunday’s race, one of the crucial harmful drivers at Phoenix remains to be alive within the title chase.
Hamlin had no thought the place the Playoff battle stood when he handed Chastain on the ultimate lap. Intentionally cryptic, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver intimated he may need made a unique selection, had he recognized.
“I might have made the perfect choice for me,” Hamlin mentioned. “I want I might have recognized… I didn’t know if I used to be operating for tenth or twenty fifth. Listening to the radio the entire time, there was simply crickets.
“No person informed me something—I want they did.”
No matter Hamlin’s selection may need been, Logano’s path to the Championship 4 stays extraordinarily difficult. He enters the Spherical of 8 in eighth place, 24 factors under the present elimination line.
If Logano is to duplicate final 12 months’s victory at Las Vegas, he’ll have to search out significantly extra velocity than he confirmed at Kansas Speedway, the place he completed twenty first in the latest race on a 1.5-mile intermediate observe.
However in advancing on the Charlotte Street Course within the nail-biting means he did, in a race Shane van Gisbergen received by greater than 15 seconds, Logano—in phrase and deed—delivered a commentary on the present elimination postseason format, as NASCAR contemplates adjustments to the Playoff system subsequent 12 months.
“The Playoffs create drama,” Logano mentioned after the race. “It creates story strains. It creates superior moments like that. I don’t perceive what folks don’t like about it. I actually don’t get it.
“And if you happen to’re a type of individuals who say the common season doesn’t matter, and Playoff factors don’t matter… Ha! One level would have been the distinction there…
“In case you don’t have cutoff races and issues like that, what are you speaking about in the present day? How Shane waxed everybody’s butt?”
Because the Playoffs are constituted in the present day, if the remaining seven different drivers have been polled, the bulk doubtless would like to not must face the driving force previously generally known as “Sliced Bread” (as in the perfect factor since) within the Spherical of 8.
Logano and the complete Staff Penske group benefit from the status as late bloomers who excel within the season finale at Phoenix.
That’s an edge Logano is glad to hold into the Spherical of 8—regardless of the way you slice it.
