MOORESVILLE, N.C. — After a promising day turned sour at Kansas Speedway, Joey Logano is headed to a place where victory lane knows his name very well this time of year.
Continuing the “Even Year Logano” trope, the three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion has won the postseason race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway every other year since 2022. With the old win-and-you’re-in elimination format, Logano has used this race to catapult himself to championship contention in the finale.
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This year is a little different. Not only is there a new format but the race is much earlier in the postseason – the fifth race instead of the seventh.
That may be a blessing for Logano this year. After Kyle Larson earned maximum points at Kansas and Logano scored a 20th-place finish and a handful of stage points, he lost 51 points and is now 67 behind Larson after Sunday’s race.
Before the issue, Logano had slowly drifted from starting on the pole, while teammates Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney seemed to show their speed more as the day went on.
“I think the potential is there when you look at what the 2 was able to do. The 12’s last run was really strong too, so the potential in the company is there. It wasn’t one of our stronger races. We were an eighth-place car give or take from there a couple of spots. That’s about what we had in it,” Logano said. “It was just an average to below average kind of day.”
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Logano is still fourth in the points standings with ground to make up – but the fall Las Vegas race is exactly the place for him to do it.
In the eight fall races since the first one in 2018, Logano has never finished worse than 14th. He has a total of three top-five finishes and five top-10 finishes, including wins in 2022 and 2024. Last year, he finished sixth despite lacking performance during the race.
This year could be a return to form for him in the fall race. Something will be missing, however, as this is the first NASCAR race weekend without Kyle Busch since his death.
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Las Vegas Motor Speedway is planning tributes to Busch. His family will be at the track throughout the weekend, including his two children, Brexton and Lennix.
The Busch family returning to the track helps fill an unforeseen void Logano has felt as the father of children who used to see Busch’s children every race weekend but don’t now that Busch is no longer around.
“All of the kids, you don’t understand, it’s not just that Kyle is not on the racetrack, it’s that his family is not in the bus lot anymore and that’s like a hole that hasn’t really been filled. We noticed that at Bristol. I see my kids playing with their kids. Amelia and Lennix, it’s kind of crazy to see Lennix go walking into MRO and they just went up and hugged each other and they were so glad to see each other. They hadn’t seen each other since Kyle’s passing, so that sense of community is far more important than what we think sometimes,” Logano said.
While Charlotte Motor Speedway looks tricky, Logano hits its stride with Phoenix Raceway, Talladega Superspeedway and Martinsville Speedway preceding the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
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In the spring race at Phoenix, Logano won the pole, earned 17 stage points and led 73 laps before a crash took him out late. He has also won two of the last four fall Phoenix races and has started on the front row in three of the last four Phoenix races overall.
At Martinsville, Logano finished third with 12 stage points in the spring. That was his 14th-straight Cup top-10 finish there, which began with the fall 2019 race. Since joining Team Penske, he has never had a Cup race there where he didn’t either start or finish in the top-10.
Talladega has also historically been a hotbed for him to run up front and earn stage points.
Never count out Even Year Logano, right?
