The latest epic championship comeback attempt from Joey Logano and the Penske No. 22 team was thwarted on Sunday at Kansas with a flat tire and a 20th place finish that dropped him from third to fourth in the standings.
In some ways, it’s right back to square one as Logano is now 67 points back, after starting 65 points back as the ninth seed before the Southern 500. At the same time, this is more of a reflection of a nearly flawless start to Kyle Larson’s playoff than what the Bristol Night Race winner has put together.
With that said, Logano did start on the pole last week but the flat tire and lost track position from a slow pit stop cost him around 10 to 15 points, with a car that he once again thought was pretty competitive.
“I think the potential is there when you look at what the 2 was able to do, and the 12’s last run was really strong too, so the potential in the company is there,” Logano said during a Wednesday media availability from a Motorsport.com question. “It wasn’t one of our stronger races. We were an eighth-place car give or take from there a couple of spots. That’s about what we had in it, so we kind of scored those stage points. I think we finished eighth and fifth in the stages and then we had the tire come apart there at the end and we lost a bunch of spots.
“It was just an average to below average kind of day – nothing too much to be excited about, but, at the same time, a little bit more optimistic about our mile-and-a-half stuff, seeing that as a company there’s potential there.”
But again, if Kyle Larson hadn’t won two races and scored the most stage points, the deficit is not as great.
“It’s about getting hot at the right time,” Logano said. “That’s what the Chase, playoffs, any postseason type situation it’s all about being hot at the right time. Not that the regular season doesn’t matter, it does, and it seeds you to be in the right spot and to help you along. Either format does that, but the performance this time of year is what matters the most. There’s no doubt that the players in the game have changed throughout the year a couple times on who has been the fastest car, the dominant car and right now, obviously, is the most important time of the year to do that.”
Watch: In-car: How Joey Logano faded to 20th late at Kansas
When Logano won at Bristol, he closed the gap pretty immediately to within over a dozen points. NASCAR added 15 more points to win this season, and that overall number is now 20 points more than second-place, which tells Logano that no one is out of it.
He is going for his fifth win at Las Vegas this weekend and has strong Team Penske tracks in Martinsville and Phoenix coming up too.
“I think the thing that has probably stood out the most is the value of wins and stage points together,” Logano said. “How you can quickly make up a fair amount of distance with the 70-point day. At the same time, if you have somebody like Larson last week that was already right there at the points lead and has a 70-plus point day and he’s checked out really quickly. He puts together a couple of those and he’s out there, but just as quickly if he has a couple bad ones and someone else has a couple big days like that, it closes right up. I think we’ve seen that all year.
“To me, look at Tyler Reddick at the beginning of the year. He was checked out. I already penciled him in as the regular season champion. I figured that was for sure, but as quickly as they get out there and take a big lead it can change just as quick if someone else gets hot at the right time. We’ve seen it. We’ve lived it. We went through and made up quick a few spots in points with that too, so I think that’s the thing that stands out the most to me.”
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