Points leader looks to advance to Championship Round at Homestead
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AVONDALE, Ariz. — Brad Keselowski may have thinned the ranks of his buddies in the garage with his hard-edged driving in the past few races in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs, but he still has a prominent on-track ally among the eight drivers still in title contention.
Team Penske teammate Joey Logano has his own designs on the championship with two races left in the season, entering this Sunday’s Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 (3 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Phoenix International Raceway as the current points leader. But he also has the best interests of the organization — which includes a two-car contingent battling for the crown at Homestead-Miami Speedway — at heart.
Logano said there’s no doubting his teammate’s tenacity, but that he’s there for Keselowski should he need an assist.
"Obviously, everybody is gonna play the games and everyone is gonna try to take you down, but I think Brad is pretty strong to be able to handle that stuff," Logano said Friday before opening practice for the Eliminator Round finale, the last cut-off point before the championship field of four is determined. "For me, I’ll be the best teammate I can to him. We support each other. We try to work with each other and make our cars the fastest and that doesn’t mean just talking about our race cars. That means talking about other things that go on on the race track.
"Obviously, it’s a tough situation to be in, for sure, but, at the same time, we try to help each other as much as we can."
Logano was well back of the collision between Keselowski and Jeff Gordon that sparked the post-race melee between their two crews. His hands were full on a day of survival, salvaging a 12th-place finish after a pit stop gone awry and a spin in the last 40 laps.
While it would be natural for Logano to side with his teammate, he admitted that finding a clear-cut answer in assigning blame would likely be a fool’s errand.
"We can all watch the film as much as we want and say, ‘Oh, it looks like this happened or it looks like that happened,’ " Logano said. "We’re all going to have different opinions and most likely both drivers are not gonna have the same opinion either because we all have big egos here and we’re all right. That’s how we think, but deep down inside they probably know what happened. They may not admit it, but it’s not my place to judge. I think when you’re in the situation and you’re driving the car you know what’s going on and you know what you’re doing, and it’s just kind of how you deal with it afterwards."
Team Penske isn’t the only organization with multiple drivers still alive in the championship race — Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth are also vying for a spot among the last quartet standing post-Phoenix. Penske, however, doesn’t have a full-time driver outside of Chase contention who could potentially run interference for a title-contending teammate, either at Phoenix or in the championship finale Nov. 16 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Logano said he doesn’t see that as a disadvantage in the least. While both sets of stablemates plan to cooperate — within reason — in the spirit of team unity, there will be an element of every man for himself as this year’s new-look Chase enters the closing stages.
"… I think for the most part everyone is going to race hard," Logano said. "It’s the last race of the year. Everyone is gonna want to go out there and win the race and end on a good note no matter what. Yes, there are four cars racing for a championship and a lot can go down into that, but really you just have to stay focused on your own car and what you can control and then whatever happens from there happens."
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