Joey Logano’s bid for a second NASCAR Cup championship in a row, third in the last four years, and fourth of his career, is in serious jeopardy. His disappointing 20th-place finish in Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway has placed him in a do-or-die situation.
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Starting from the 14th position, Logano definitely did not get off to the kind of start in the playoffs that he hoped for. For whatever reason, the Penske driver and his crew chief, Paul Wolfe, just could not get their act right.
“We just had no grip. There isn’t much to say outside of that. It wasn’t good enough. This has been a good track for us in the past, but I don’t know,” Logano was quoted as saying in a Ford post-race media release.
“Some of our cars were decent at times, but not like we have been here. It’s a bit of a head scratcher to try to understand. I don’t know where we are in points, but it’s obviously not the day we wanted. We just did a good job of not making a bad day worse,” he added.
Sunday’s run was an extension of the bad luck Logano has endured at Darlington. In the seven races since he won there in Spring 2022, Logano has just one top-five, one other top-10 finish. His five other finishes have been outside the top-10.
“Yeah, it was surprising. I thought we would be able to run in the top-10, just because of history and because we’ve been there in the past, but when everyone got better, we didn’t,” added Logano.
Logano is now three points below the cutoff line to advance to the Round of 12. The No. 22 Team Penske driver wasn’t the only one who left Darlington with a long face.
Richard Childress Racing driver Austin Dillon finished three spots behind Logano in 23rd place and leaves Darlington eight points below the cutline.
“We started okay and then we just had issues throughout the race,” Dillon said in a Chevrolet post-race press release. “We got too tight in that one run and just couldn’t overcome it.
“We kind of got it back going the other direction; made some passes and got up to around 18th. We hit pit road, and the caution came out. It was just unfortunate. We just struggled with our No. 3 BPS/Winchester Deer Season XP Chevrolet and didn’t execute like we needed to,” he continued.
“We just have to do better. But all-in-all, we’re not that far below the cutline. We just need to have a solid finish in the next two races of this round,” added Dillon.
Just a rough day for Alex Bowman
Arguably, the biggest slide of the day was Team Hendrick’s Alex Bowman. He barely made it into the playoffs but had great optimism coming into Sunday night.
Unfortunately, Bowman finished 29th, two laps behind the leaders, and is now tied with Josh Berry, whose race was essentially over after an opening-lap crash. Berry finished last of the 38 drivers in the Southern 500 field. Both drivers are now 19 points below the cut line.
Bowman suffered a major setback in Stage 2 when a defective air gun led to a 40-second pit stop, leaving him two laps behind. But to Bowman’s credit, he was able to regain both laps. Unfortunately, he fell behind again by two laps in the final stage.
“It wasn’t because of a lack of effort, but it was an unacceptable day,” Bowman stated on X. “We weren’t great when we unloaded, didn’t qualify well [29th], and lost track position that we had… It was just a s**t day, but it could have been worse, for sure.”
Berry has no idea what happened to his car
Berry’s Wood Brothers Racing Ford had trouble right from the start of the race, after wrecking on the first lap. His team took the car back to the garage, made repairs, and eventually got him back on track to earn two playoff points.
“It’s kind of hard to even really know, but the car bottomed out five or six times and just wrecked. It was definitely unexpected. We didn’t really fight that too bad in practice,” Berry said in a Ford post-race media release.
“I saw a replay of it when I was sitting in the car while they were fixing it from the [first lap wreck], and you could tell that it bottomed out four or five times, and you can’t save them when they’re like that,” he added.
Even with his poor showing, Berry is still hopeful that he and his No. 21 Ford team can turn things around in the second race of the playoffs.
“It’s just disappointing. It looked like a lot of people had a bad night, which we know how this goes,” Berry said.
“We just need to avoid a bad night. I obviously haven’t seen it yet, but I feel like we’re still within striking distance, that if we just go have two good weeks, we’ll at least be in the mix once we get to Bristol,” he added.
The second race of the playoffs will be staged at Gateway outside of St. Louis.
