LAS VEGAS — One week after being momentarily knocked out of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, Joey Logano seized on his reversal of fortune to become the first driver locked into one of the four championship-eligible spots for next month’s season finale.
When he left Charlotte Motor Speedway on Oct. 13, Logano was one of the four drivers eliminated as the field of title contenders was trimmed to eight with four races to go. However, when Alex Bowman’s Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet failed inspection after the race at Charlotte, Bowman was disqualified and Team Penske’s Logano was reinstated to the playoff field.
Logano passed Daniel Suarez with five laps remaining Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and went on to his fourth victory at the track on NASCAR’s top-tier circuit. It was the second win of the playoffs for Logano, who made Ford the first manufacturer locked into the final four at Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 10.
He needed a massive fuelsaving effort to win, but the No. 22 team proved to be both lucky and good in Vegas.
“Man, we did some fuel mileage stuff, didn’t we?” Logano said. “What an incredible turn of events here the last week. It takes the whole team to do the fuel mileage stuff. Not just the engineers — spotter, it takes all of us to do it. Total team win.”
Over the closing two laps, Logano had to hold off Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell, a fellow playoff driver who led a race-high 156 laps after starting in pole position. A late pit stop put Bell 30 seconds behind Suarez, and Bell was cruising in his No. 20 Toyota, trying to run down Suarez’s No. 99 Chevrolet, when Logano got to Suarez first.
Bell didn’t have enough to catch Logano and finished less than a second (0.662) back.
“We’re going to the championship four again!” Logano shouted on the front stretch.
He and Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch are the only active two-time Cup Series champions, with Logano now in position to win a third title. Busch, who hasn’t won a race since June 2023, didn’t make the playoffs this season.
Bell, who has been part of the championship-eligible four the past two years, was clearly disappointed after such a dominating day.
“I don’t think I’ve come to terms with this yet,” he said. “Just a bummer. I think everyone on this team did everything perfect. Just because I ran second today doesn’t mean I’m going to finish anywhere next week. You’re never safe in this deal, so we needed to win today, and unfortunately we didn’t.”
Suarez, who was eliminated from the postseason at Charlotte, finished third for Trackhouse Racing.
“It’s a little heartbreaking. I think we could have won it,” Suarez said.
Hendrick’s William Byron, who was fourth, is trying to earn his second straight berth in the final four.
“It’s going to take a win, I feel like, so we have to keep working for it and keep running up front,” Byron said. “If we run up front, it will do two things: We’ll be able to compete for a win and score a lot of points. We just have to keep running like this.”
Byron was followed by teammate Bowman in fifth and then JGR’s Martin Truex Jr., who was eliminated from the playoffs after the first round and plans to retire from full-time competition after this season. JGR’s Denny Hamlin was eighth in a massive recovery on an underwhelming day as one of only four playoff drivers who finished in the top 10.
“Not a clean day. That certainly sums it up. You’ll have that,” Hamlin said. “We did the best we could to get the best finish.”
Hendrick’s Kyle Larson, who was coming off a victory at Charlotte and had won the past two Cup Series races in Las Vegas, rallied from two laps down to finish 11th. He was the top-seeded driver at the start of the race and is now third in the standings behind Logano and Bell.
“It was a messy, messy day. This was a long, hard-fought 11th-place finish,” Larson said. “We got the most we could out of the rest of the day.”
The remaining three playoff drivers had terrible days as reigning Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney of Penske, Chase Elliott of Hendrick and regular-season champion Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing were all collected in the same early crash.
Logano is locked into the championship race, while Bell, Larson and Byron are above the cutline. Hamlin, Reddick, Blaney and Elliott are all below the elimination mark with two races remaining in the round, next Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Nov. 3 at Martinsville Speedway.
Reddick, who had just won the first stage to pick up 10 bonus points, made contact with Elliott to trigger the crash.
“You’ve just got to be aggressive on restarts. I just had a split-second to make a decision,” Reddick said. “By the time I realized I was in trouble, it was too late. There was nowhere really to go. Be a little conservative, that’s what we needed to do. We’ll learn from it.”
Reddick was attempting to gain on-track position and misjudged how much room he had.
“I thought the hole was there; it wasn’t. It closed so quickly,” Reddick said on his radio.
The crash also collected Blaney, who had driven from last in the field into the top 20 after a crash in Saturday practice prevented Blaney from making a qualifying lap.
Blaney and Elliott were able to continue, but the crash ended Reddick’s race. Blaney finished 32nd, Elliott was 33rd and Reddick was 35th.
Afterward, Blaney revealed he had a headache after the crash until the finish.
“My head was killing me,” said Blaney, who requested Advil during the race. “I was fine until the end, and then my head started to kill me again.”