There’s an old saying in NASCAR that the best way to overcome a bad race one week is to go out and win the next one the following week. Joey Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe lived up to exactly this in Sunday’s Würth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway.
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After being disqualified from last week’s race at Talladega Superspeedway, the Logano-Wolfe partnership roared back to win Sunday deep in the heart of Texas. It was Logano’s second career Cup win at the 1.5-mile high-speed oval in Fort Worth, Texas.
Whenever controversy or a bad finish occurs, it is inherent upon a team – particularly with its driver and crew chief – to double down on strategy and planning on how to run the next race.
Logano was in the right place at the right time, leading the two final laps of Sunday’s race – and seven laps led in the entire 271-lap event – to earn his first win of the season, giving the three-time Cup champion an automatic berth in this year’s playoffs.
And after the rough start Logano had in the season’s first 10 races – zero wins, zero top-fives and just one top-10 finish – the Team Penske brain trust had to work even harder to salvage things at Texas.
Now, the pressure of making the playoffs is over, Logano bounces back from 11th in the Cup standings to 9th after Texas, and worrying about things like earning stage points becomes somewhat not as important going forward.
“Obviously, wins heal a lot of things and fix a lot of problems,” Wolfe said during Sunday’s post-race press conference. “Last week was unfortunate,” he added about how Logano’s season-best fifth-place finish was erased when he was disqualified after post-race inspection found a serious spoiler rules violation.
“We’re not proud of what happened there (at Talladega). It was nothing intentional. It was really a learning moment, like I’ve told all the guys in our meetings this week,” Wolfe went on to say.
The rules infraction at ‘Dega that led to Joey Logano’s DQ was not intentional, but rather than appeal NASCAR’s decision, Wolfe and Logano simply got back to work – and work harder.
“We know what happened, or we have a pretty good idea what happened, and we need to make sure that doesn’t happen again and move forward,” Wolfe said. “Fortunately, we have great partners and owners that understand that sometimes it’s just part of the sport, and we’re all working on the edge.
“It’s hard to compete if you’re not and trying to get all you can. It was something that we could have done a better job of to not have happen with that penalty post-race. We’ve continued to look forward from that, and I think that showed this weekend our focus was on continuing to bring fast cars and put ourselves in position.
“Yes, it feels good, and we’ve put that behind us and learned from it.”
Logano: “It’s nice to change the storyline” after Talladega debacle
When Joey Logano, who has now won 37 Cup races in his career (and it was Wolfe’s 43rd win of his Cup career, continuing his lead as the winningest active crew chief in Cup), came into the Texas post-race press conference, it was revealed that he has never started as far back as he qualified (27th) and wound up winning a race.
That definitely helped erase some of the embarrassment of last week’s DQ as well as the well-publicized profanity-laced rant Logano directed over the team radio to teammate (and eventual Talladega winner) Austin Cindric after he didn’t push Logano to the front in the final lap of Stage 2 at ‘Dega.
“I mean, there’s always a story next week, right?” Logano said. “I told my wife last week before we left, I said, ‘Watch, we’ll go win this one.’
“It’s just how we do stuff. Any time you kick us down, I feel like we come back ten times harder, whatever that is in us. Definitely had a fast car today, and like I said, it’s nice to change the storyline.”
Boy, he can say that again!
