Being the first driver to have a place in the championship decider race at Phoenix comes with its advantages. Joey Logano will hope to make full use of those advantages to win his third Cup Series championship.
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The Team Penske star won the South Point 400 to book his spot in the final four. The driver of the #22 now has more time to prepare than anybody ahead of the title decider in Phoenix.
That’s a much more significant advantage than some may realize. A NASCAR race week sees drivers do media on Tuesday and Thursday before the race weekend. So the ones who make the final four after the Martinsville race will only have a couple of days to prepare in terms of deciding on setup and strategy without any distractions. The team also has to get the car ready to reach the track by Tuesday.
“There’s really not a lot of time to really focus in so the amount of distractions going into the biggest race of your career really can stack up drivers,” he said on Kevin Harvick’s podcast. “To be able to start working on that stuff now to where you limit your distractions on race week is really going to help out.”
The Penske cars have been good in this part of the season in the last two years. They’ve been champions in both. A win in 2024 would make it a hat trick for Roger Penske’s organization making it an incredible feat. However, Logano will have his hands full at the Phoenix Raceway and he is very much aware of that.
Who will be in the final four as per Logano?
The competition this year is as tight as it gets and only the best have made it through to the round of eight. At least that’s what Logano believes. When asked who he thought would be his competitors at Phoenix, the Team Penske star mentioned the ones that are already in the remaining places of the top four on points. They do have a good cushion to the cutline, but a new winner can change all of that.
“You look at the four that are in right now, there’s a pretty good points cushion there but we said it before, I mean as far as this round of 8, there is no one in there that should not be in there,” the two-time champion added.
“It’s really in my opinion eight of the best race teams in the series right now so everybody that gets in will be definitely well-deserved to be in there.”
The top four on points, apart from Logano currently include Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson, and William Byron. That’s the same championship competitors from last season with just a different Penske driver. The points cushion may be significant but it would not be surprising to see someone below the line take the checkered flag in at least one of the next two races.
