LOUDON, N.H. — As the engines cooled from last weekend’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup opener at Chicagoland Speedway, Joey Logano and his Team Penske No. 22 crew shared emphatic high-fives back at the team hauler.
The celebration might have been unbefitting for a runner-up effort, but for Logano, the strength his over-the-wall outfit showed in a pressure-packed situation provided a window for added optimism.
Logano’s second-place finish last weekend kept him lodged in the top half of the Chase grid heading into Sunday’s Bad Boy Off Road 300 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM) at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He sits fifth in the Sprint Cup standings, just seven points back of series leader Martin Truex Jr., last weekend’s winner.
As last week’s race headed to overtime, Logano’s No. 22 Ford benefited from speedy service and emerged from pit road ahead of Denny Hamlin‘s No. 11 Toyota — which happens to be the Joe Gibbs Racing team with one of the best pit-stop crews in the business. The fast stop allowed Logano to restart on the outside line, following Truex’s charge through to the front in the two-lap dash to the checkers.
“If it wasn’t for that pit stop, we wouldn’t have been in position for a great finish like we had,” Logano said Friday at the 1.058-mile track in the cradle of the Connecticut native’s New England stomping grounds. “That pressure and the way you handle it is, to me, the definition of a true athlete. There are a lot of athletes that can practice really well and when it becomes game time and you put the pressure on them, it goes the wrong way. And then there’s an athlete that you put the pressure on and they get better, and that’s what I saw in the 22 team last weekend, and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of that.”
The finish provides some needed breathing room for Logano, who’s claimed two of his 15 Sprint Cup victories at New Hampshire. The cushion he obtained last weekend is hardly a failsafe, but it hasn’t altered his team’s tack in the Chase’s Round of 16, the opening three-race series in the postseason.
“We talk about this round as being base hits and don’t have to do anything crazy,” Logano said, taking a cue from the “small-ball” tactics of baseball strategy. “We did that exactly last week, so we’ll just come up here and do the same exact thing. If something happens, something happens and we’ll approach Dover in a different way, but, right now, let’s go out here and if we can win the race, let’s win the race. If not, let’s try to top-5 it and that will give us a good sense of security heading into Dover. It’s one race at a time, one step at a time.”
The pressure of the opening round may not drastically sway the game plan for either Logano or teammate Brad Keselowski, but there’s already some incentive coming from within the walls of Team Penske‘s Mooresville, North Carolina, headquarters. Simon Pagenaud locked up the IndyCar championship last weekend for team owner Roger Penske, leading a 1-2-3 sweep of Penske-owned cars in the series’ final standings.
The IndyCar title and podium monopoly have given Team Penske one crowning highlight to its 50th anniversary season. Your move, Joey and Brad.
“It makes the NASCAR guys want to go out here and continue this awesome year that Team Penske has had so far, and Brad and I have a great shot at it,” Logano said. “What if we finished 1-2 at Homestead? How cool would that be? We have an amazing opportunity to do that. We’ve got a long ways to go to get there, but we can do it.”