RELATED: Logano’s chances, other Chase drivers, at Martinsville
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Joey Logano, riding a clean sweep of the Eliminator Round of this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup, will attempt to become the first driver since Jimmie Johnson to win four consecutive races in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series when the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 gets underway Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.
He’ll begin that quest from a prime position, having won his sixth Coors Light Pole Award pole of the season on Friday. Logano, who was fifth fastest in the opening round and fastest overall in the second and third rounds, also won the pole here in the spring event.
Four wins in a row might be a tall order, but it is not an impossible task. Johnson wheeled his way to four straight during the 2007 Chase, a decade after teammate Jeff Gordon went 4-0 during the summer of ’98.
It happened as early as 1964 when driver Billy Wade won four in a row while teamed with Hall of Fame team owner Bud Moore. Twelve drivers have enjoyed such a run of success, with only David Pearson, the Silver Fox, and Richard Petty, the King, doing so twice.
Two drivers on the list, Dale Earnhardt and Harry Gant, scored their fourth wins here at Martinsville.
“Our ultimate goal is to win the championship, and if we can win four in a row, great,” Logano said Friday prior to practice at the .526-mile track. “We’ve been on an amazing roll here lately, which has been pretty spectacular.”
Logano, 25, won the season-opening Daytona 500, then didn’t win again until Watkins Glen in August. Before the month had ended, however, he was back in Victory Lane at Bristol.
He had finishes of sixth, third and 10th in the opening round of the Chase to advance into the Contender Round. The Team Penske driver has not been beaten since, winning at Charlotte, Kansas and Talladega and setting himself up to add his name to an impressive NASCAR list.
“This race track has been another good … track for us,” said Logano, who has finishes of fourth, fifth and third in his last three Martinsville races. “We haven’t won here yet (he finished second in ’10) but it’s been a good track for us the last few times we’ve been here. We’ve qualified well and ran up front here in the spring, just didn’t quite have the car good enough to win.”
Fellow driver Kyle Busch nearly pulled off the four-win trick earlier this year, winning at Kentucky, Loudon and Indianapolis. In his attempt at four straight, he finished 21st at Pocono.
“It’s definitely a zone,” Gordon, a four-time series champion, said earlier this week. “I’m pretty sure that Joey probably said, ‘I didn’t anticipate going to Talladega and winning at Talladega.’ Sometimes when you’re in that zone, you’re fighting hard to win … you have the car to be able to win it, the team to win it.
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“You go to another one, you don’t think you have it, you’re still finding your way into Victory Lane. Next thing you know, you feel like you can win every race.
“It’s amazing how hard it is to get yourself to that level of confidence. When you get there, it can carry you for a long way.”
The potential fallout from on-track contact/conduct — Logano and Matt Kenseth (Joe Gibbs Racing) seem to have a budding feud after incidents at Kansas and Talladega — isn’t a concern, Logano said, although the tight confines of Martinsville make it a choice stop for settling differences on the race track.
“We’re focused in on winning the race,” he said. “That’s what we can control. We can’t control anybody else’s thinking or what’s in their mind.
“We have to think about how we advance and how we win this weekend, in particular. That’s what we’ve been focused on all week. We’re not going to change that.”
