Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
With a victory last season at New Hampshire and a fourth in the spring event, it marks no surprise that Joey Logano enters this weekend with confidence that he will have a strong run behind the wheel of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford.
“I feel pretty good about it,” he commented on Friday morning. “This has been a good race track for us the last couple of years. Obviously, this is my home track so I talk about that a lot when I come up here, but I really want to win here again. I feel like we’re in good position after last week. We had a solid finish and that positioned ourselves pretty good to race fairly aggressive through this race and try to get a win like we did last year.”
Last year, Logano scored the victory at New Hampshire to lock himself into the second round of the Chase. This year, he enters the weekend sitting fifth in points after finishing sixth at Chicagoland Speedway. He also enters with a bunch of momentum, if you consider that he has finished in the top-seven in each of the last six races with 21 top-10s on the season.
Reflecting back on last season, you could say that Logano is about at the point that he was last year – speed on his side, chemistry in the team and finishes going his way. It worked in his favor last year as he was able to make it through each round of the Chase, becoming one of the final four to fight for the championship. The race didn’t go as he hoped, though, with pit stop issues taking him out of contention.
Going through the process last year and seeing it again this year, Logano admits that the Chase portion of the season does feel different than the regular part of the season.
“As much as you try to make it feel like it was the rest of the season and nothing changes and you tell yourself that and you tell your team that, but something does change because it’s the playoffs,” he stated. “It’s gonna get a little bit more intense and there’s a lot more on the line, so it’s gonna feel different and depending on your position after the first two races is going to decide what your intensity level is when you get to Dover or you get to an elimination race. Like I said, hopefully we get through this race well and we can go through Dover and feel comfortable about what we’re doing there and not having much pressure, but it’s one race at a time.”
Scoring a victory at New Hampshire would certainly help in making Dover much easier next week. Though to do that, Logano will probably have to make it through some late-race restarts. Restarts have been a tricky spot for NASCAR lately, with the drivers demanding that NASCAR starts looking closer and making some calls so it’s fairer. In six of the seven restarts in the spring, the leader was able to maintain the lead by starting on the outside – something to consider as you head down the stretch. Though for Logano, he’s not focused on that – but whether the rules are played fairly.
“Hopefully, we all just play by the rules of what NASCAR has laid out for us and hopefully NASCAR enforces that this week,” he commented. “I think that’s what we’re all looking for as drivers is not to be able to lay back. We want to be able to restart where we need to restart and let the control car as the leader be the control car and not the second-place car by laying back.”
