Logano Looking for Bucket List Win in Southern 500 Ahead of 'Wild Card' Playoff Round
Without a win, Joey Logano would be heading into this weekend's NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway with the pressure of the world on his shoulders. It would have been a must-win situation for the Connecticut native to make the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Fortunately, by recording a win in quintuple overtime at Nashville Superspeedway in late June, the driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse doesn't have to worry about the possibility of missing the Playoffs this weekend at the 1.366-mile Darlington. Instead, he will have to worry about staying in the Playoffs starting next weekend.
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With the opening round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, where Logano's bid for a third NASCAR Cup Series title ended a season ago, kicking off at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a superspeedway/intermediate hybrid track, Watkins Glen which will feature a lot of new curbing and rumble strips around the road course, and Bristol Motor Speedway being a tire wear unknown after the spring race, where tires were chewed up and spit out, Logano is expecting the unexpected.
"When you think of it from that lens, they're all kind of wildcards in that first round," Logano said in his media availability at Darlington Raceway on Saturday.
Despite the opening round being an unpredictable one, Logano doesn't feel like it changes his outlook at all when the Playoffs begin. He will open the Round of 16 with one thing on his mind, survival.
"I don't know if our strategy changes much," Logano explained. "It kind of depends on what your position is as you go into the next race. What do you have to do to accomplish the ultimate goal, which is always getting to the next round, first, right? How do we get to the next round? I think the strategy at this point is pretty apparent to most and it's easy to say, hard to do. The first round has a lot of interesting racetracks in it. But a lot of times, if you just have races without issue, you can usually get through that one."
Last season, Team Penske started off sluggish, but as they have done the last couple of years, they found speed in the Playoffs which resulted in Ryan Blaney taking his first NASCAR Cup Series title and the second consecutive championship for the organization. Unfortunately, for Logano, he found trouble at Bristol Motor Speedway, as he was crashed out on Lap 262. With that, his title hopes came to an end before he could take advantage of the newfound speed.
Logano says he feels a similar trajectory in the speed of the Team Penske Fords this year and feels he simply needs to still be in the mix when the Team Penske cars come to life.
"We've gone on these runs before during the Playoffs, and something we've kind of become accustomed to for the most part at Team Penske. Hopefully, we can bring a little more to the table, and seems like our cars are getting faster here recently. So, I'm excited about that part," Logano explained. "It seems like our cars are getting more and more competitive and we're starting to peak at the right time. Seems like it's a little sooner than last year. Which is good, I hope that's the case.
"Because if you look at [Blaney], last year it really wasn't in the first round that they looked any better, it was really as they got into the second and third round is when it really started to show that the speed picked up. We were just too late. We were already knocked out at that point. You just have to survive long enough to make sure the speed is there when it matters."
While the Penske cars starting to trend toward being faster and faster with each passing race is important, a crucial component of survival in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs is Playoff Points.
Currently, Logano has just five Playoff Points stored in his bucket heading into the Playoffs, tied for the least of any driver that has picked up a win this season. That can't give Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe a comfortable feeling heading into what Logano feels is essentially a round filled with wild card races.
But Sunday's race at Darlington provides the 34-year-old a pivotal opportunity to even the playing field to a degree before the Playoffs begin next weekend as there are seven more Playoff Points up for grabs on Sunday. Playoff implications aside, a win would also mark Logano's first in the Southern 500, one of NASCAR's four crown jewel events.
"It's the Southern 500. This one is on the bucket list, man," Logano said of Sunday night's race. "This is the one you want to win. Darlington is a place you always want to win, no matter what it is, but the Southern 500 adds a little bit to it."
Undoubtedly, there's a lot at stake and a lot of motivation to win, but Logano is a driver who doesn't really need added motivation to win. Perhaps nobody displays more of a killer instinct with a win on the line than Logano does.
"You go for it. It doesn't matter to me. If it wasn't the Southern 500, I'm still going out there to win," Logano stated. "That's our goal. So, you're in it, you're out there going for it, no matter what. It doesn't really change much, considering it's the Playoffs next week and all of that type of thing. You still race to win every week."
If he's in position late in the Cook Out Southern 500, Logano will do whatever it takes to try to win the race, ask William Byron, who Logano bump-and-ran past for the win in the spring race at Darlington in 2022. Win, lose, or photo finish in the Southern 500, Logano will advance to the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs for the seventh consecutive season, regardless. And after gaining the bitter experience of an early exit from the Playoffs a season ago, he'll look to parlay that knowledge to get him through the early rounds of the Playoffs this time around.
TOBY CHRISTIE