The Spin That Changed an Entire Season

It’s June 30, 2024.

The NASCAR Cup Series is at Nashville Superspeedway for the 19th race of the season, and Denny Hamlin took the lead with seven laps to go after a fierce, 20-lap battle with Ross Chastain.

With the pass complete, Hamlin was getting ready to ride off into the sunset for the 55th Cup win of his career, his fourth of the 2024 season and his first at Nashville.

But wait, it’s not over yet. Austin Cindric spun on the backstretch with 2 laps to go, right when Hamlin was a turn away from taking the white flag and putting the race away for good. For the first time in four Cup races at Nashville, the winner would be decided in overtime.

And as the field got lined up for the first overtime attempt, no one — and I mean no one — in their wildest dreams could’ve imagined what was about to happen.

The race devolved into the mother of all trainwrecks, setting new Cup records with five overtime attempts and 31 extra laps beyond regulation. Cars were running out of fuel left and right, and the drivers couldn’t make a single clean lap without losing their minds over and over again.

Eight cars crashed out in overtime, with countless others taking damage. And by the time the checkered flag waved on lap 331, the finishing order was so randomized it was almost as if names were pulled out of a hat to decide the results.

Cindric’s spin was the catalyst for all of the mayhem, and the spin created a long-lasting ripple effect that crowned Joey Logano as the 2024 series champion.

You see, Logano entered Nashville 14th in the points standings. Two drivers (Cindric and Daniel Suarez) outside the top 16 in points had already won at this point of the season, so the No. 22 team was already feeling the heat of the playoff cut line after a horrendous start to the year.

Nashville was shaping up to be a race that wouldn’t change the status quo for the No. 22 team, as Logano was running 14th in the closing laps. But doors open and doors close throughout a race, and Cindric’s spin opened the door for Logano to pull off the improbable 5OT win, where he seemingly defied all laws of math and physics by running the final 110 laps of a 1.333-mile track on a single tank of fuel.

The 5OT fuel-mileage win was Logano’s ticket to the playoffs, and without it, he wouldn’t have qualified for the postseason.

Of course, some will point to the finish at Richmond Raceway in August, where Logano pulled off a fantastic restart and would’ve won if Austin Dillon didn’t “do what he had to do” to win. But that’s dealing with hypotheticals, and the reality is that drivers win some and lose some; Logano caught a bad break at Richmond but caught a good break at Nashville. And it was that Nashville win that proved to be the difference for his championship hopes.

What happened next can only be described as a mixture of insanely clutch performances and the black magic of even-year Joey Logano.

Logano started the postseason by winning the opening race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, with teammate Ryan Blaney pushing him to the win in overtime. That gave the No. 22 team two extra weeks to prepare for the Round of 12, but Logano’s title hopes were soon clinging to a thread at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL elimination race. After a hard-fought battle, he was ultimately eliminated from the playoffs by four points after a late-race surge from Tyler Reddick.

For the first time in an even-numbered year, Logano was set to fail to make the Championship 4 … for a whopping two hours, until the even-year magic kicked in once again.

The magic came in the form of Alex Bowman, who was disqualified from the ROVAL after his No. 48 car failed to meet minimum weight. Hendrick Motorsports decided not to appeal the DQ, and Logano — as the first driver eliminated — took Bowman’s place in the Round of 8.

From there, it was almost as if Logano and the No. 22 team were toying with the rest of the field, as they immediately capitalized with a win in the very next race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Logano had about a fifth-place car, so crew Paul Wolfe rolled the dice with a gutsy pit strategy that ultimately paid off, as Logano stretched the final 70 laps on one tank of fuel and made the winning pass with six laps to go, all while Blaney (who was eight laps down with damage) helped assist him with drafting.

The streak of Logano making the Championship 4 in every even-numbered year stayed alive, and by winning the opening race of the Round of 8, Logano had two extra weeks to prepare for the winner-take-all finale at Phoenix Raceway.

Is what happened next really a surprise? Logano wasn’t leaps and bounds above the rest of the Championship 4 as he was in 2022, but he still led triple-digit laps on Sunday (Nov. 10) and was in control of the race as the championship came down to the wire. Blaney mounted a late charge, but he ran out of steam and could only watch as the teammate he helped push to wins at Atlanta and Las Vegas went on to win the race and become just the 10th driver to win three Cup championships.

For almost the entire regular season, Logano and the No. 22 team looked dead to rights. They didn’t have the speed nor the consistent finishes to win a championship, but Logano capitalized on every single opportunity he had in the regular season and the playoffs to win his third championship despite setting records for the fewest top fives (seven) and top 10s (13) of a Cup champion in the modern era and the worst average finish (17.1) for a Cup champion ever.

All of it was possible thanks to Cindric’s Nashville spin. And it’s nothing short of incredible that one lazy spin at the end of a race in late June decided the championship more than four months later.