Joey Logano, in particular, has feuded with fellow finalists
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With Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and Ryan Newman all occupying the same small space in the Phoenix International Raceway media center last weekend, the vibe was largely upbeat, and with good reason. All three had joined race winner Kevin Harvick among the final four drivers eligible for their first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.
But as the details came to light about Newman's forced fender on Kyle Larson to keep his postseason hopes alive in the final lap, it broached the delicate topic of retaliation ahead of the most important race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs.
Newman claimed his memory of Larson's over-aggressive moves while racing him in the inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event at Eldora Speedway in 2013 might not have equaled an outright payback, but that it certainly factored into his last-ditch decision to make their battle for position a full-contact contest.
That's when the trio broke into an impromptu, cheery rendition of "Who wronged who?" and whether the list of past transgressions would carry over to Sunday's season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 (3 p.m. ET, ESPN). That's when Logano learned that Hamlin thought he still owed him one, and that Newman hadn't let a run-in with the youngest title contender slip his mind.
Logano quizzically asked Hamlin, "I thought we were even after that?" before smiling and putting his arms on the backs of both would-be rivals flanking him, saying, "my friends," in hopes that the hard feelings from those previous dust-ups had passed. Hamlin, for one, didn't think the list of demerits would carry over, especially under the spotlight of the championship race.
"Yeah, I think you know who shows you respect through many races," Hamlin said. "A guy cuts you a break here and there, you keep that in your mind, and when he's behind you knocking on your back bumper, then you can let the person go. It changes. When you have conversations, though, when you have bad blood between people, when you have conversations, you hash it out, things don't linger on as much.
"Next week, we're not going to be out there trying to settle scores between the four of us. It's going to be what can we do to make our car faster than the rest of these three guys, and let's do it the right way."
In past seasons, Logano has run afoul of each of the three other drivers he'll be vying against for the title. In June 2010, he made an on-track incident and pit-road confrontation at Pocono with Harvick personal when he said that his wife, DeLana, "wears the fire suit in the family." Two months later, Logano and Newman had a brief war of words and needed to be separated by NASCAR officials after a crash at Michigan. Logano and Hamlin also had issues in spring 2013, colliding in consecutive weeks at Bristol and Fontana, sparking nasty Twitter exchanges and an eventual back injury for Hamlin that forced him to the sidelines for the better part of five races.
With the bygones behind them last weekend, the three remained in good spirits -- even as they discussed the unwritten ledger in each driver's memory bank about how one driver races another.
"There is no statute of limitations on anything. A driver never forgets," Newman said, adding that past offenses can become magnified as the intensity rises in a given race. "Jimmy Spencer coined the phrase, but really, a driver never does forget. I don't think me doing what I did, whether it was Kyle Larson or (Marcos) Ambrose or (Greg) Biffle or whoever was right there around me, I would have been the same thing. That's just my rationale to justify it in my head."
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