Homestead race is a ‘really special weekend’ for Logano during NASCAR playoffs

Joey Logano hoisted his first NASCAR Cup Series championship trophy here six years ago and then playfully placed his infant son, Hudson, inside the giant silver chalice.

Logano claimed the title by winning the Ford EcoBoost 400 victory that day at Homestead-Miami Speedway, zooming past leader Martin Truex Jr.’s No. 78 Toyota in his No. 22 Ford with 12 laps left following a late caution.

“It was a really special weekend,” Logano recalled Thursday. “There’s nothing like winning your first championship. I don’t think there’s a race that stands out in my mind more than that one.”

The 34-year-old returns for the Straight Talk Wireless 400 — now the third-to-last of 10 playoff races — on Sunday in prime position to claim his third Cup Series crown. Only Jimmie Johnson, with five titles, has won more than two since the “Chase for the Cup” playoff format was implemented in 2004.

Logano is the lone driver from the Round of 8 with a locked-in spot in the Championship 4 race Nov. 10 in Phoenix. That’s due to him capturing the checkered flag Sunday in Las Vegas.

This weekend’s NASCAR Playoffs Round of 8 races will begin Saturday at noon with the Craftsman Truck Series Baptist Health 200, featuring Miami native Nick Sanchez, the series’ 2023 Rookie of the Year. That will be followed by the Xfinity Series Credit One NASCAR Amex Credit Card 300 at 4 p.m.

Then at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Logano, Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, and defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney will square off in the Straight Talk Wireless 400.

Bell, vying for back-to-back wins at Homestead-Miami Speedway, leads the playoff standings in points. Larson, the 2022 winner at Homestead and 2021 Cup Series Champion, is second, followed by Byron. Logano is fourth, but knows he’ll advance regardless of what happens Sunday or the week after at Martinsville.

“I would argue that I’m the only car on the racetrack that has zero to lose and a win to gain,” Logano said. “We can’t finish worse than fourth in points. You look at the next two races — we can be a little more aggressive from a strategy or setup standpoint. If we can help our teammate get into the Championship 4 and have 50 percent of the cars, that would be great.”

Logano was initially eliminated from the playoffs after the Oct. 13 race at Charlotte, North Carolina, but his fate changed about three hours later. Alex Bowman was disqualified following postrace inspection, pushing Logano ahead of Bowman in the points standings and back into contention.

“It’s a wild turn of events and the reason why you never give up throughout the year,” Logano said. “You just keep plugging away because you never know what’s going to come your way. … Now we’re in and the last thing you want to do is waste this opportunity.”

Logano capitalized on his new chance with a dramatic win in Vegas, running the final 72 laps on one tank of fuel to hold off Christopher Bell by 0.662 seconds.

“Those guys made a great call on pit road,” Elliott said of Logano and his team. “Kind of threw a Hail Mary and gave themselves a shot.”

“I don’t know if we viewed it as aggressive as some others did,” Logano noted. “Because our Fords get great fuel mileage.”

Logano also won at Vegas two years ago on his way to becoming a two-time Cup champion and has qualified for the Championship 4 every even-numbered year since the elimination playoffs began in 2014.

Elliott, the 2020 champ, said he knows “we have to win” Sunday or at Martinsville, Virginia, to advance following last week’s crash with Reddick and Blaney — an accident caused by Reddick.

“We just have to be aggressive and keep the hammer down and try to win and get through that way because the odds of us pulling through, especially now, are slim to none,” Elliott said of this Sunday’s race.

Like Logano, who described Homestead-Miami Speedway as “a very challenging racetrack for lots of reasons,” Elliott said he enjoys racing here.

“It’s a really unique track and place that from a driver’s standpoint is always a lot of fun,” Elliott said. “It presents challenges you don’t see on a weekly basis with the progressive banking, and both ends of the racetrack driving different.”

The Craftsman Truck Series playoff standings feature Grant Enfinger, Corey Heim, Christian Eckes, and Ty Majeski at the top. Heim has five victories this season. Sanchez sits seventh in the standings. He finished one point out of the Championship 4 last year after a pit road collision at Homestead.

The 23-year-old Cuban American is more familiar with this track than any driver. He attended his first NASCAR Truck Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway at age 5 and raced go-karts on the same track as a 12-year-old.

A.J. Allmendinger, Justin Allgaier, Cole Custer, and Chandler Smith are the top four in the Xfinity Series standings entering Saturday’s race. Mayer won at Homestead last year despite Custer leading for 114 laps. Custer, the reigning Xfinity Series Champion, won at Homestead in 2017.