In good spot to advance, Logano already thinking about Homestead
For Team Penske's Joey Logano, the road to the Chase for the Sprint Cup kicked off when he took the checkered flag in the season-opening Daytona 500. Logano has gone on to record a total of three wins, 17 top fives and 22 top 10s on the season.
Headed into this weekend's AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway, Logano is fourth in the Chase standings behind Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards.
The driver of the No. 22 Ford has certainly been on a roll as of late. Since the May race at Dover, Logano has finished outside the top 10 just twice -- a 22nd-place finish at Daytona in July and a 20th-place finish at Pocono in August after running out of fuel.
In the seven races since that fuel-mileage gamble at Pocono, Logano has two wins, five top fives and seven top 10s. He opened the Chase with a sixth-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway and backed it up with a third-place finish last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
With a 33-point advantage over Kyle Busch in 13th, Logano is sitting pretty going into the final race of the Challenger Round of the Chase. While a lot can happen before the championship is decided at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Logano and his Todd Gordon-led team are already looking ahead and planning for that winner-take-all race.
"We look as forward as possible," Logano said Friday at Dover. "Obviously we're looking to the next round, we're looking really all the way to Homestead and what we have to do to build cars to the spec we want. We'll start talking setups and what we want to do there. We're constantly looking toward the end of the season and what we have to do. There's also a plan for what we've got to do this weekend."
While the team is sitting in a good spot heading into Dover, Logano knows things can change dramatically in an instant, something that constantly keeps the team on its toes.
"We feel pretty comfortable with our points position, but we've seen it happen to a few guys in this round and other rounds in years past that anything can change in the blink of an eye with something happening. We've still got to be smart," Logano said. "We want to go out there and win the race -- that's always our goal -- but we don't want to put ourselves in jeopardy of crashing or having a piece break on our car or something like that."
