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LOUDON, N.H. — NASCAR returns to the business of postseason Chases in all three of its top series this weekend. Two of those tours have landed in New England, greeted by crisp weather and the changing of the seasons.

But thoughts continue to focus on the news of this week’s social unrest nearly 900 miles away in Charlotte, North Carolina — stock-car racing’s hub and one of the sanctioning body’s primary headquarters. Protests have gripped Charlotte’s Uptown area in the wake of the fatal police-involved shooting of Keith Lamont Scott on Tuesday.

Relatively few drivers claim North Carolina as their home state, but the proximity to home bases for both drivers and teams makes the connection to Charlotte a part of their fabric.

It’s what has made this week’s turmoil difficult.

“Obviously, we’re trying to do things here today, but, yeah, there’s an emotional reaction,” Joey Logano — a Middletown, Connecticut native — said Friday from New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “A lot of times when you see things like this happen, it’s in a different city and you don’t recognize where it’s at, but when you see the NASCAR building getting vandalized and you see areas of the city that you know very well with just crazy things happening it makes you sick to your gut. You don’t know what to do, and you kind of feel helpless.

“All we can do really is just say some prayers and hope that eventually everything calms down and everyone is able to come to some kind of peace at the end of this thing, and we can move on and move forward and make our world better.”

 

Logano also said he understands the role professional athletes play when it comes to social issues.

“I think any athlete or public figure takes on a responsibility,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that you can influence in good ways or bad ways, and I feel like you should know that. There are a lot of athletes and public figures that don’t realize that about the reaction they can make across the country or the world in a lot of cases by just a couple of words. … I personally believe when I sit down here I know the influence that I can have on young eyes watching us that are very fragile at the time that they could go a lot of different ways.  You want to be a positive member of society.”

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency late Wednesday night as the protests took violent turns. Windows were broken at the NASCAR Hall of Fame and adjacent NASCAR Plaza offices, and several other businesses were vandalized in the city’s central business district, escalating Charlotte to the lead in national news broadcasts.

“You can’t really ignore it,” said Austin Dillon, who — like his Richard Childress Racing team — calls Welcome, North Carolina home. “It’s on all the news stations, but for me it’s sad that our country is at this point in time. I just hope everybody can look at everything and gather their thoughts and figure out the right way to fix the problems we have. Hopefully, with the way things are the right people will come together and fix these problems that are going on. It’s just sad, really.”

Said Matt Kenseth, a Cambridge, Wisconsin, native: “You just hope it stops. I don’t know enough about what actually happened to start it all. Obviously, I think that we’re very, very, very fortunate to live in a free country and peaceful protest and demonstrations are OK. I mean certainly the violence and the vandalism and the theft and stuff isn’t — isn’t really a way to I think prove a point or try to make things better. It’s definitely not making things better in that sense, so hopefully we’ll get it all figured out and go from there.”

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.”