SPEEDWAY, Ind. — With Joey Logano turning back the clock at rustic North Wilkesboro Speedway, the battle for the final handful of NASCAR Cup Series Chase berths became even steeper. As one of the sport’s most accomplished drivers locked up valuable points, the gap between the cutline and those chasing it grew steadily with only five races remaining until the reset.
Logano’s 73-point performance proved monumental. He gained 57 points on the cutline, vaulting to 15th in the Cup Series standings and opening a 49-point cushion over Erik Jones, the first driver on the outside looking in, entering Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Sun., 2 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, IMS Radio Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The gap between 16th and 17th in the standings now sits at 33 points, the largest entering any race this season. The previous high was just 15 markers entering Nashville Superspeedway two months ago.
But just making The Chase isn’t what the three-time champion desires.
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“It’s not the goal just to make it. The goal is always to win the championship,” Logano said in a media availability at IMS. “We capitalized on a great car last week, which was awesome and proved you can score a ridiculous amount of points if you do this right. We can scratch and claw our way back into the top 10 if we continue to do that a few more times before The Chase starts. If we do that, we have a chance to win the championship.”
The victory dropped Logano’s Team Penske teammate Austin Cindric to the provisional bubble, 33 points above Jones. He gained a single point on the cutline with a 14th-place effort at North Wilkesboro. The homegrown Penske driver shares a similar sentiment to Logano, believing the No. 2 team is capable of a late-season push.
“Other than the deadline coming closer, I feel like I’m in no different position,” Cindric said on Saturday of his points position. “If anything, from a number of points standpoint, I’m better than I’ve typically been most of the year as far as that gap.
“You would think that the heat is one, but like I’ve always said, I want better than 16th. Sixteenth is still pretty far away from where my goals are as far as a shot to run for a good finishing position in the championship.”
The other driver that boosted his Chase hopes at North Wilkesboro was Shane van Gisbergen, who matched his career-best oval finish with a fifth-place result. He now sits 54 points above the cutline, though isn’t comfortable with that cushion given the demanding stretch of races ahead. One factor working in his favor, however, is the schedule’s abundance of short tracks over the final month of the regular season.
“I don’t [feel comfortable] because you saw what Joey did last week and he was more than that gap and now he’s right with us,” van Gisbergen said. “Thirty points sounds great, but it’s not a lot. It can evaporate pretty quickly, but it’s something we’re focused on because that’s our whole year. A lot of pressure these next five races just to execute, make no mistakes and try to get in genuinely.”
Chase aspirations were hurt for Jones, who placed 21st last weekend, tallying 16 points. He lost 41 points to the bubble entering Indianapolis, a venue that he considers a strong suit for Legacy Motor Club. He knows the upstart team is still a work-in-progress at short tracks, though, and needs to make the most out of the Brickyard 400 and Daytona International Speedway, as long as he’s mathematically still eligible.
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“Penske has been one of the top groups in the Cup Series for years and champions in the sport, and we’re still getting there,” Jones said. “We know it’s going to be hard and going to be a battle to try to compete with them every week. They are bringing their A-game, I’m sure, to the 2 and the 22 and picking who their bullet is going to be every week.”
Meanwhile, RFK Racing — which had all three of its entries inside The Chase grid through the opening 13 races — has bled an array of points over the last two months. Even with a seventh-place effort at North Wilkesboro — stopping a three-month drought without a top 10 — Brad Keselowski is 19th in points, 58 tallies below the cutline. Damage was done for the No. 6 team when Keselowski had four straight finishes of 34th or worse between Nashville Superspeedway and Naval Base Coronado.
Yet a 34-point outing last weekend gives the 2012 Cup champion confidence with a trio of short tracks on the horizon.
“We’ve got to have more weeks like we had at North Wilkesboro,” Keselowski said. “If we do what we did at North Wilkesboro the next four or five weeks, we will be just fine.”
Preece has spent his entire career working toward a chance to compete for a championship. Now, despite sitting 48 points below the cutline with only a handful of races left, the first-time Chase hopeful refuses to go down without a fight.
“All it takes is one win,” Preece, the 2026 Cook Out Clash winner, said confidently. “I’m not saying that in the win-and-you’re-in sense, but I mean that – what happens if [Logano] wrecks and I have a strong points day? That’s where I actually have enjoyed this points system because we’re all going to go into Daytona, and if you only have a 10-point cushion to the guys you’re around, you are not comfortable. You need to go into Daytona with a 60, 70- point cushion to feel comfortable.
“It’s everybody on our team trying to find some speed because even though there [are] five races, I don’t go down until it’s done. I will keep swinging.”
Of the six drivers relatively close in points, Jones will have the clearest view of the front of the field for Sunday’s green flag in 14th. Preece and Cindric will start 34th and 35th, respectively, with the No. 2 Ford fighting an electrical issue throughout the weekend that they think has been resolved after qualifying.
