Joey Logano gets new life as NASCAR drivers hit Las Vegas

For a few hours after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Joey Logano was eliminated from the playoffs. He said he had already put the race behind him as he left the track.

Then Logano started to hear rumors about issues in the postrace technical inspection on Alex Bowman’s car. The rumors turned out to be true, as Bowman’s car did not meet the minimum weight requirement. Bowman was disqualified and scored with a last-place finish.

The disqualification dropped Bowman out of the top eight of the playoff standings and eliminated him from the playoffs. Logano moved back into the top eight and is still playoff-eligible as he seeks to win his third Cup Series title.

The Round of 8 in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs begins with the South Point 400 at 11:30 a.m. Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Logano and the rest of the Cup Series field will be on the track Saturday for practice and qualifying at 1:35 p.m.

Logano said on a virtual news conference Tuesday that his approach to the next three races in the Round of 8 didn’t change from when he thought he was eliminated.

“You go out there and you attack it,” he said.”The positive is I feel 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.”

‘We’re still alive’

The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford has reason to be confident. Logano is a three-time winner at LVMS and won the pole for the Pennzoil 400 in the spring.

In 2022, Logano won the South Point 400. It locked him into the Championship 4 at Phoenix, where Logano went on to win his second Cup Series title.

“You have to be at your absolute best at this point of the season,” he said. “I feel confident in our team that we got that. We’re still alive. We’re still going, and that’s the name of the game in these playoffs.”

This year hasn’t been the most consistent for Logano. He has two wins but an average finish of 18th. But that isn’t impacting Logano’s belief that he can make a run at the title.

“The stats may not look like it,” he said. “We may look like we’re underdogs from the outside, 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.”

‘Primed and ready to go’

Hendrick Motorsports driver William Bryon also has a lot to be confident about. He’s recorded top-three finishes during the three races in the Round of 12 and comes to Las Vegas looking to lock himself in the Championship 4 for the second straight season.

Bryon won at Las Vegas in the spring of 2023 and led a race-high 176 laps. He said his No. 24 team has continued to get better during the playoffs.

“It’s just different as you go through the rounds of what you can afford to make mistakes-wise,” Bryon said earlier this month. “Hopefully our team is continuing to peak and perform better, and by the time we get to Vegas, some of the tracks at the end of the season, we’re primed and ready to go.”

Byron has three wins this season and missed out on a possible win at Kansas, a 1½-mile oval similar to Las Vegas, in the Round of 12 on Sept. 29.

While winning is magnified in the playoffs, Bryon said he learned in last year’s run to the Championship 4 that maximizing results is important to getting through the grind of the playoffs.

“We definitely want (to get to the Championship 4) a lot,” Bryon said. “That can be a negative, at times, because you experience that so anything less would be considered a failure. You’re just trying to manage that expectation that you have for yourself and make sure you’re staying in the process to get the best results you can.”

Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.