One Spin, Four Points, and a Logano Playoff Miracle

Forget “Sliced Bread,” if you haven’t already. Call him “Houdini.”

On Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course, defending champion Joey Logano made yet another great escape from the Round of 12 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.

When Denny Hamlin passed Ross Chastain in the Turn 7 hairpin on the final lap of the Bank of America ROVAL 400, Logano and Chastain were tied for the final berth in the Round of 8.

Logano, however, held the tiebreaker based on best finish in the round. Logano ran fourth in the Round of 12 opener at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Chastain’s best was ninth in that same race.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Chastain charged the final corner in a last-ditch attempt to pass Hamlin for the point he needed to advance to the next round. The contact spun both cars at the exit from Turn 17.

Chastain drove backwards across the finish line as Logano passed him to secure the final spot in the Round of 8 by four points.

For the second straight season, Logano needed help to survive the Round of 12. Last year, it was a disqualification to Alex Bowman that kept Logano in the Playoffs. On Sunday, Chastain made two critical pit road mistakes that doomed his chances and elevated Logano’s.

The second of those errors, a speeding penalty exiting his pit box on Lap 87, forced Chastain to stay on the track for the final 22 laps. By the end of that stint, with his tires degraded, Chastain was unable to keep Hamlin behind him when it mattered most.

Last year, granted a reprieve when Bowman’s car was DQ’d for failing to meet minimum weight, Logano proceeded to win the following week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and immediately set his sights on the Championship 4 event at Phoenix Raceway.

His subsequent triumph in the Arizona desert gave Logano his third series championship. After Sunday’s race, one of the most dangerous drivers at Phoenix is still alive in the title chase.

Hamlin had no idea where the Playoff battle stood when he passed Chastain on the final lap. Deliberately cryptic, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver intimated he might have made a different choice, had he known.

“I would have made the best decision for me,” Hamlin said. “I wish I would have known… I didn’t know if I was running for 10th or 25th. Listening to the radio the whole time, there was just crickets.

“Nobody told me anything—I wish they did.”

Whatever Hamlin’s choice might have been, Logano’s path to the Championship 4 remains extremely challenging. He enters the Round of 8 in eighth place, 24 points below the current elimination line.

If Logano is to duplicate last year’s victory at Las Vegas, he’ll have to find considerably more speed than he showed at Kansas Speedway, where he finished 21st in the most recent race on a 1.5-mile intermediate track.

But in advancing at the Charlotte Road Course in the nail-biting way he did, in a race Shane van Gisbergen won by more than 15 seconds, Logano—in word and deed—delivered a commentary on the current elimination postseason format, as NASCAR contemplates changes to the Playoff system next year.

“The Playoffs create drama,” Logano said after the race. “It creates story lines. It creates awesome moments like that. I don’t understand what people don’t like about it. I really don’t get it.

“And if you’re one of those people who say the regular season doesn’t matter, and Playoff points don’t matter… Ha! One point would have been the difference there…

“If you don’t have cutoff races and things like that, what are you talking about today? How Shane waxed everyone’s butt?”

As the Playoffs are constituted today, if the remaining seven other drivers were polled, the majority likely would prefer not to have to face the driver formerly known as “Sliced Bread” (as in the best thing since) in the Round of 8.

Logano and the entire Team Penske organization enjoy the reputation as late bloomers who excel in the season finale at Phoenix.

That’s an edge Logano is happy to carry into the Round of 8—no matter how you slice it.