Joey Logano served his son Hudson a giant silver bowl after winning his first NASCAR Cup Series championship trophy here six years ago. Logano won the Ford EcoBoost 400 on Day 1 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, holding off the No. 78 Toyota of leader Martin Truex Jr. in the No. 22 Ford after a late caution with 12 laps to go. “It was a very special weekend,” Logano recalled Thursday. “There’s nothing like your first win. “In my mind, there is no better competition,” he said.
The 34-year-old returns in Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 400 (now the third-to-last of 10 playoff races) and is in prime position to win his third Cup crown. Since the introduction of the Chase for the Cup playoff format in 2004, only Jimmie Johnson has won five titles and has won two more. Logano is the lone driver for the November 10 Championship Round of 4 in Phoenix. Because he captured the checkered flag in Las Vegas on Sunday. Round eight of this weekend’s NASCAR playoff races begins at noon Saturday with the Craftsman Truck Series Baptist Health 200 featuring 2023 series rookie Nick Sanchez of Miami. That will be followed by the launch of the Xfinity Series Credit One NASCAR Amex Credit Card 300 at 4 p.m.Logano, Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney are scheduled to compete in the Straight Talk Wireless 400 on Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
Bell, riding back-to-back wins at Homestead-Miami Speedway, has the points lead heading into the playoffs. Larson, the 2022 Homestead winner and 2021 Cup Series champion, is second, followed by Byron. Logano is fourth, but knows he will continue to play no matter what happens Sunday or next week at Martinsville. “I think it’s the only car where I have nothing to lose and nothing to gain,” Logano said. “We can’t finish worse than fourth. Look at the next two races, we can be much more aggressive in terms of strategy and set-up. “It would be great if I could help my teammate get to Championship 4 and have 50% of the car.”
Logano was initially eliminated from the playoffs after the Oct. 13 race in Charlotte, North Carolina, but his fate changed about three hours later. Alex Bowman was disqualified after post-race inspection and Logano re-entered the race ahead of Bowman in the points standings. “That’s a huge turn of events and that’s why I never give up all year,” Logano said. “Keep going because you never know what could happen. … Now we’re in it, and the last thing you want to do is waste this opportunity.”
Logano used his new skills to pull off a surprise victory in Las Vegas, completing the final 72 laps on a tank of fuel to edge Christopher Bell by 0.662 seconds. “These guys made great decisions in the pit lane,” Elliott said of Logano and his team. “They gave up the Hail Mary and took a chance.””I didn’t think he was as aggressive as some of the others,” Logano said. “Because our Fords are fuel efficient.”Logano also won a doubleheader in Las Vegas two years ago and has qualified for the Championship Four every year since the playoffs began in 2014.
Elliott, the 2020 champion, said he knew he “had to win” either Sunday or in Martinsville, Va., after last week’s crash involving Reddick and Blaney (the crash Reddick caused). “We’ve got to be aggressive and put the hammer down and try to get a win and go through, especially right now because the odds are zero,” Elliott said of Sunday’s race. Like Logano, who described Homestead-Miami Speedway as “a very difficult racetrack for a number of reasons,” Elliott said he enjoys racing there. “This is a really unique track and very exciting from a driver’s perspective,” Elliott said. “This creates problems that progressive banks don’t see every week, and both ends of the chain behave differently.”
The Craftsman Truck Series playoff leaders are Grant Enfinger, Corey Heim, Christian Ekes and Ty Majeski. Haim won 5 matches this season. Sanchez is 7th. He dropped a point from the Championship Four following a pit crash at Homestead last year. The 23-year-old Cuban-American knows this track better than any other driver. He competed in his first NASCAR Truck Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway at age 5 and raced go-karts at the same track at age 12. AJ Allmendinger, Justin Allgaier, Cole Custer and Chandler Smith are in the top four in the Xfinity Series standings heading into Saturday’s race. Mayer won at Homestead last year, but Custer led 114 laps. Custer, the reigning Xfinity Series champion, won at Homestead in 2017.
