Even once the rumors started circulating that Alex Bowman was potentially at risk of failing post-race minimum weight inspection on Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, Joey Logano didn’t allow himself to feel much
For one, he wasn’t sure that meant he was going to advance in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs after he was eliminated by the unofficial results.
“Usually, nothing happens,” Logano said during a Tuesday teleconference. “It was kind of a surprise to hear that. Typically, by the time you roll the car off the scales, they give them the opportunity to put weight in the cars and you’re usually fine but in this case that wasn’t the case and I was like, ‘Well, would we be in?’
“That’s the first question you have to ask and obviously the answer was ‘yes’ and then you’re still kind of cautiously optimistic because you’re thinking, ‘Well, there probably will be an appeal if there is and we may not know until later,’ so you kind of keep going on with your life and preparing for the next race.
“Obviously, it came out yesterday that they’re not appealing, so we move on and into the Round of 8 and off we go.”
As far as Logano sees it, he was going to race for a championship no matter what, because even if the results stood, the Team Penske No. 22 was still in the owners playoff.
So what is the approach?
“The same way we would have if we’d made it any other way,” Logano said. “You go out there and you attack. The positives, I feel like we’ve been steadily getting better and improving throughout the season to where we are now. I feel confident in the speed we have in our car. Kansas, we had a lot of speed and almost won the first stage there. We have to clean up a couple issues on the execution side. Talladega is Talladga. We got caught up in the big crash there, but the speed we also had this weekend at the Roval looked pretty solid to me, to where we are a Championship 4 caliber race team.
“The stats may not look like it. It may look like we’re underdogs from the outset looking in, but internally we feel very confident in our race team that we can make a run at this thing and get ourselves into the Championship 4. We’ve seen it in the past where you get in there and anything can happen at Phoenix. The goal right now is to look at the next three races and how do we maximize that. We can point our way in. We’re only 11 out, so it’s not a lot of points by no means. It can happen very quickly, so one race at a time. Right now, the focus is Vegas and we’ll try to maximize the day there.”
To wit, this has been a less than stellar season holistically for Logano, who has just one win on the year.