1. Joey Logano Worries Just Went Right Out the Window
What a difference a race makes. Or rather, what a difference a race makes when you end up in victory lane.
That’s a relevant thought because of all the handwringing over the slow start for defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano. In fact, slow start is probably underselling it just a tad, as he came into Texas Motor Speedway with just one top-10 result (an eighth at Martinsville Speedway) and fresh off a 39th-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway.
In fact, Logano, who is no slouch at superspeedway racing, has an average finish of 37th between Daytona International Speedway and Talladega in 2025, which is about as bad as it gets.
But if Logano can be counted on for one thing, it’s showing up with a great performance when it matters most. Several times, that’s meant in the Championship 4, but Texas showed it also applies to ending a rough patch as well.
All those worries about when the No. 22 team would get it in gear? Poof, gone, just like that. He’s now ninth in points, not that it even matters since he’s got his win to get into the playoffs.
Certainly, Logano won’t want to run the rest of this season like he ran prior to Texas. The good news is that Team Penske overall seems to be figuring things out, as Austin Cindric won at Talladega and Ryan Blaney has been fast, if unlucky, since this campaign began.
There’s a good chance now that the frustration of the first 10 races will be a distant memory by the time Logano and his teammates start the playoffs this fall — and they tend to do pretty well once that time of year rolls around.
2. They Don’t Make NASCAR Like They Used to, Part I
There are a lot of aspects of the Next Gen era of NASCAR that make the sport feel like a Bizarro version of itself, if you’ll excuse the DC Comics reference. Racing at short tracks and road courses often stinks, intermediates have offered some of the best action, and drafting tracks … okay, well, those are still pretty similar.
The problem now is that some of the more reliable tracks for exciting racing have fallen off, while the issues afflicting short tracks and road courses haven’t been fixed. So not only is the product not holding up to the memories that longtime fans have of days gone by, it isn’t even measuring up to what we saw the past few years.
Of course there’s no way to fully quantify fan sentiment, so we turn, as we so often do, to Jeff Gluck’s Was it a good race?” poll. The numbers, even if they don’t capture every NASCAR fan, don’t lie, and the trends are definitely worrying.
Among the first 11 races of the 2025 Cup Series season, four got better poll scores than their 2024 counterparts: Circuit of the Americas, Phoenix Raceway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway. COTA was a notable success, up from 50.2% good last year to 86.7% good this time around, while Martinsville is hardly worth celebrating — it improved from 31.9% to 50.9%.
The average ‘goodness’ score through 11 races is down from 70.5% to 62.9%, which seems right. However, the real bad news is how long it’s been since there’s been a “good race”: None of the last five races have even cracked 60% good and certainly reinforces the subjective feeling that the racing just hasn’t been that entertaining.
All of which makes the next stop so interesting. The first Kansas Speedway race was the favorite among all 2024 events in Gluck’s poll, with 95.8% of respondents voting it good. If this Sunday’s race sees a big drop-off too, it’s a pretty big sign that things have gone all the way Bizarro.
3. Will Noah Gragson Fans Represent Again?
The NASCAR All-Star Race has been an unusually divisive topic this year, which is at least a change from the usual apathy that surrounds it. Still, there are some small things about the event that have remained fun through venue and format changes, one of which is the All-Star Race Fan Vote.
Unless you are especially locked in on all things All-Star Race, you may be surprised to learn that Noah Gragson has won the vote each of the past two seasons. NASCAR recently revealed the top 10 vote-getters so far, and lo and behold, Gragson is among them.
Only one driver has ever won the voting three straight years, and it’s someone pretty well-known for his popularity with the fans: Chase Elliott, from 2016-2018. If Gragson’s followers can propel him to the same honor, it’ll be an impressive show of their support, so from one writer to that group, respect.
4. They Don’t Make NASCAR Like They Used to, Part II
Even if the NASCAR Cup Series isn’t firing on all cylinders right now, at least the Daytona 500 is still the Great American Race, the most prestigious event in stock car racing and the Super Bowl of the sport. Right?
As the great and soon-to-be-retired college football announcing legend Lee Corso has often said: “Not so fast, my friend.” Three-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart made some waves this week by suggesting that a Daytona 500 victory isn’t as meaningful as it once was.
While appearing on the Rubbin is Racing podcast, Stewart suggested that the seemingly random nature of winning, and perhaps parity in NASCAR, made the accomplishment less special today.
“In my eyes, it doesn’t mean the same now as it did 15-20 years ago,” Stewart said while admitting he knew he would “be crucified by a lot of people” for expressing his views. “Anybody can win; I mean, you look at some of the guys that won the Daytona 500. I don’t want to go into the list of guys because they’re guys that I do respect and have friendships with, but they’re not guys that should have won the Daytona 500, and they’ve won the Daytona 500, and that’s all they’ve won.”
Any time a take like this comes along, it’s a must to consider the messenger. Stewart never won the Daytona 500 himself, so his comments could have a tinge of sour grapes. It also would have been braver for Smoke to speak out while he was still heavily involved in NASCAR instead of the year after he decided he was done being a team owner.
That doesn’t mean his criticisms aren’t valid, especially coming from a future Hall of Famer. Everyone who takes the checkered flag in February at Daytona still calls it a life-changing moment, and every driver who fails to taste victory there can’t help but live with a little regret.
Stewart claims he wouldn’t trade any of his Cup championships for three Daytona trophies. For the rest of us, the question of whether winning the Daytona 500 is still the pinnacle of a stock car racing is one that’s sure to spark some spirited debate, which may have been what Stewart was going for in the first place.
5. Jesse Love Seems to Be on the Fast Track
Jesse Love has already had a taste of Cup Series competition with two starts this season, but Richard Childress Racing announced this week that he’ll be getting more very soon: this weekend at Kansas Speedway and at Richmond Raceway in August.
A good argument can be made that Xfinity Series rookie and teen sensation Connor Zilisch has already been appointed most likely to be NASCAR’s Next Big Thing, but Love has every chance to take that crown for himself. He’s already got two Xfinity wins under his belt and is trending toward improving on his eighth-place finish in the 2024 final standings, currently sitting fourth in points.
Even more impressively, Love has done it while ‘skipping’ a rung in the usual NASCAR developmental path, going right from winning the ARCA Menards Series title in 2023 to the NASCAR Xfinity Series last year. He hasn’t looked out of place while doing so, and RCR seems to agree.
Unlike some other prospects on the rise (see also: Heim, Corey), Love is driving for an organization that will likely have a Cup Series seat open up for him sooner rather than later. Zilisch, Heim and others are almost certain to be among the next wave of NASCAR stars, but Love should be right alongside them and may actually be already waiting in the Cup Series when they arrive.
