Who… should you be talking about after the race?
Had post-race inspection at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL gone just a little differently, Joey Logano would have been racing only to play the spoiler to the eight remaining playoff drivers. But thanks to Alex Bowman’s failed inspection, Logano found himself back in the hunt.
And after he won the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Logano will be racing for the champion’s spoils instead. Logano started 10th and his opening stages were … solid. Logano placed eighth and fifth in the openers, but his crew chief Paul Wolfe, the winningest active Cup Series crew chief, saw a chance for more than a solid finish.
Wolfe left Logano on the track when most of the field pitted in the final stretch. It was a gamble; an overtime finish could well have derailed the plan. But there was no caution, and Logano held off a charging Christopher Bell, who had the dominant car and roared back to the front after his own late pit stop, for the win. He’ll be looking for his third Cup title in three weeks time.
In classic Logano fashion, he’s used consistency to make it this far, and now has just one goal: to outpace three other drivers in the finale. He has made the championship four in every even-numbered year since the current format began in 2014. He said before the race that he isn’t superstitious about it, but here it is, 2024, and Logano’s back in it.
And don’t forget Daniel Suarez. Using the same strategy as Logano, Suarez led twice for 57 total laps and finished third on the day, a week after he was eliminated from contention. He didn’t have enough left in the tank (possibly literally) to fight Logano and Bell, but his rebound gives him some momentum to wrap up the year strong.
What… is the big question leaving this race in the rearview?
If life was as simple as good things happening to good people, this season would have been a lot kinder to Jimmie Johnson.
Neither racing nor life is simple, though, and his return to the driver’s seat on a limited schedule has been anything but kind. Johnson has struggled in the Next Gen. Sunday’s (Oct. 20) 28th-place finish ties his best of the year and is a success in that he finished the race instead of getting caught in something, but for the seven-time champion, can that really be called a success?
Is it time for Johnson to call it a career?
It’s been said that his poor finishes will tarnish his legacy, and it’s certainly not the ending he’d choose to write, but he’s not the first driver to struggle as the sport changes. Richard Petty did. So did Darrell Waltrip. The wins tail off for almost everyone, eventually.
Johnson, a blue collar driver who created opportunities based only on what he could do behind the wheel, won seven Cup championships. Ever the good guy (sometimes to a fault, as it got him labeled as personality-challenged), he defined an era. His legacy is safe.
If he wants to race a few times a year because it makes him happy, he’s earned that right. It’s hard for his fans to watch Johnson struggle when he once made winning look so easy it gave other drivers and their fans fits.
If it stops being fun, hopefully Johnson will feel he can step away without obligation, because he shouldn’t owe anybody anything. His races don’t look like much fun, but that’s okay at this point. He’s got nothing to prove.
Where… did the other key players wind up?
Pole winner Bell should have won on Sunday, as there’s no question he had the best car. His ability to erase a 30-second deficit to close to within a second of Logano speaks volumes about just how good the No. 20 was.
Sure, Bell had fresher tires because he chose to pit. But his run during the final laps made those who stayed out question their decisions as he ran them down, sometimes by over a second a lap. Bell has been largely overlooked in this year’s title conversation, but if he makes it to Phoenix Raceway, he might very well dominate.
Stage one winner Tyler Reddick hasn’t been able to buy luck in the playoffs this year. He made his own luck at Charlotte. This week, Reddick entered the round with a solid points cushion, adding to it by winning the first stage. Then the wheels fell off. Reddick was collateral damage in a tangle between Martin Truex Jr., Chase Elliott and Brad Keselowski. Keselowski got into Reddick’s No. 45 and sent him sailing.
After a complete flip in the frontstretch grass, Reddick was able to limp to pit road, but the damage wasn’t reparable. Reddick’s day was done … and barring a miracle, so were his title hopes as he plummeted to 30 points below the cut line.
Defending series champ Ryan Blaney also had his share of problems throughout the weekend. A practice crash relegated him to a backup car and a last-place start. Blaney marched forward when the green flag fell and made steady gains throughout the first stage.
Unfortunately, he was also collected in the restart incident that cost Reddick his day. While the No. 12 team did make some initial repairs, the car was too damaged to contend. Blaney finished eight laps down in 32nd, falling to 47 points below the cut line.
When… was the moment of truth?
The truth is, Sunday’s race was a fuel mileage race. It didn’t feel like it when Bell was tracking down the leaders at a furious pace late after pitting for fuel with most of the field. It may explain why Suarez gave way to Logano without a fight, but other than that, it didn’t really hurt the finish the way fans think mileage races do.
In fact, it made it better.
If the handful of drivers who gambled on fuel had pitted instead of putting on a furious charge, Bell would have likely cruised to the win. Bell beat William Byron, the next driver with fuel and fresh tires, by almost two seconds. That’s a lot of real estate, and that doesn’t make for a very exciting finish. Maybe Byron could have made a run without traffic, but lapped cars would still have been a factor.
And that’s the nature of the beast. The race had some twists, some drama, and it was a fuel mileage race. It didn’t need an overtime, just differing strategies and one great racecar for Bell. Sometimes it’s really that simple.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
With just two races to go to decide who’s title-worthy this year (And yes, that is sarcasm. There really should be a sarcasm font. Maybe Comic Sans … ), the Cup Series heads to the track that once decided it all, Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Two of the last three races at HMS have been decided by less than a second, with the 2022 event boasting a margin of less than a tenth of a second at 0.082. The last four Homestead winners are in this year’s title hunt.
HMS is one of many tracks that has benefitted from the Next Gen racecar, and it’s a good track in terms of putting the race in the teams’ hands, which is as it should be this late in the playoffs (next year, Talladega Superspeedway will be in that spot in the playoffs).
Bell was the winner in 2023, and after the furious run he put in on Sunday, he should be the favorite to be the first repeat winner at HMS since Greg Biffle took three in a row from 2004 to 2006. Don’t count out Denny Hamlin, whose three wins at HMS are the most among active drivers. Want a dark horse? Austin Dillon has a really solid 11.4 average finish and has finished in the top 12 for the last eight years in a row.
How… likely are any of the bottom four playoff drivers to turn it around?
With Homestead-Miami and Martinsville Speedway standing between the eight contenders and the title race, chances of any of them advancing without a race win are slim, as all of them are over 20 points on the wrong side of the line: Hamlin (-27), Reddick (-30), Blaney (-47) and Elliott (-53) would need two near-perfect races while Bell, Kyle Larson or Byron would need a terrible week or two.
But they also have two races to win their way past the others.
Hamlin is the active win leader at both Homestead and Martinsville. His biggest problem is himself; he has to put a lackluster playoffs well and truly behind him to get his head back in the game. But he can win either race — or both.
Reddick pulled off a comeback in the last round, but can lightning strike twice? Reddick’s best chance is next week in Miami; he has three top fives in four Cup starts and two Xfinity Series wins there. But he has struggled at Martinsville, posting a 19.3 average finish in the Cup Series with no Xfinity starts at the half-mile track. He’ll have to either win at HMS or overcome his past at Martinsville.
Blaney won at Martinsville last year to grab a last-minute championship berth, and he capitalized on it at Phoenix. His record at Homestead is mediocre, though, and while he had an average finish of 5.3 at HMS in the Xfinity Series, that was a long time ago. He has to perform in the current Cup car.
Elliott is solid at both tracks, with a 10.4 average finish at Homestead and a win and 12.7 average at Martinsville, but he has to be better than solid to advance — he has to win.
One of these drivers can absolutely pull it off. But considering the strength of the rest of the field, more than that is unlikely. Better luck next year.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.
i didn’t know johnson was in the race until i went to nascar’s website to see rundown and saw johnson’s name. personally, he should just be an owner.
be interesting to see what nascar says about reddick’s little flight. at least the car stated in tact and he wasn’t hurt.
speaking of hurt……i’m really surprised blaney doesn’t have a concussion. even after the race he said he had a headache.
onto homestead.
Regarding Reddick’s flip, it seems the legends oval at Las Vegas is very slightly banked, which ramped the car just enough to roll it. I really hope the lesson NASCAR takes from this is “sometimes weird things happen” and not “we need to demolish all the legends ovals at these tracks. I think something similar happened when Chris Buescher flipped at Charlotte a couple years ago, though that was more like he caught the “grass” at the edge of the roval turn.
By the way I’m not suggesting NASCAR should do nothing to keep the drivers safe from flips, but demolishing legends tracks shouldn’t be it.
Jimmie was one of the greats, the key word being was. Give it up now, Jimmie; your time has gone, and it is embarrassing now to see you thrashing around at the bottom. Give it up while people still remember you as seven time.
Oh good, another fuel mileage win, which is one of several reasons I gave up on NASCAR. Like Indycar, the announcers are talking about “fuel saving” from the beginning of the race, which means the drivers are not running at full speed, which means they are not racing. You win not by driving faster than the other guy, but by using less fuel.
I used to attend about 15 races per year in person prior to 2000. Then I watched most races on television. This year I’ve watched about four races and fell asleep during two of them.
Put yer tinfoil hats on fer this un, fellers!
The biggest question may have been answered from last week’s DQ fiasco: Logano has been chosen to be the Champion this year. We know this because;
1: Toyota is not going to win thanks to Jordan/Hamlin suing NA$CAR. Yes, even Gibbs will feel the wrath due to his association with Hamlin.
2: Hendrick always wins, and Ford is losing Stewart/Haas. Thus,
3: Logano wins to appease Penske and stop Ford from bailing on the series and going to Indycar. Hendrick has been assured this is a one time deal that’s “in the best interest of the series”, and Hendrick will resume reaping benefits/rewards of favoritism from NA$CAR in 2025.
It may not be true, but wild speculation and conspiracy theories sure are fun!
I wonder if Jimmie feels as old as he looks? He should shave the beard. He looks older than me and I’m over twenty years older. All drivers seems to look old way beyond their years.