RICHMOND, Va. — Joey Logano made it clear ahead of practice and qualifying on Saturday at Richmond Raceway: if the No. 22 team didn‘t score its first top-five finish of the season on Sunday evening, he would be disappointed.
By all metrics, Logano looked to have among the best cars in the field during practice. He started 10th, the last of the cars to make it into the final round of qualifying. But the No. 22 crew had heard this song before early in the 2024 season, already having a quartet of top 10 starting spots through the opening six races of the season, including two pole awards. Race pace has been a different issue.
The opening six weeks of the 2024 season were tumultuous for Logano. Across the first five races, he had four finishes outside the top 20, including a pair of DNFs in the Daytona 500 and at Phoenix Raceway. He also triggered a multi-car pileup at the end of the second stage at Atlanta Motor Speedway while battling for the stage win.
Logano‘s lone bright spot came at Las Vegas, fighting back to ninth position late in the race. But starting at Richmond, he saw a stretch of race tracks that the No. 22 could excel at.
“Pretty key,” Logano said on Saturday of the upcoming races. “It‘s nice to have that. We‘ve been slowly starting to build a little bit of momentum; obviously had a rough start. The last couple of weeks have been a little more competitive, a little more consistency at least in the races and we‘re starting to scratch and claw our way back up the points.”
Logano described Richmond as the team‘s best track on the circuit. Entering the weekend, he finished inside of the top 10 in 17 of his 21 races at the .75-mile track while competing for Team Penske. That surge continued on Sunday.
Logano was towards the front all race. He gained five positions during a chaotic opening stage, which saw the Cup Series start a points-paying race on an oval on wet tires for the first time. The No. 22 car raced to third in the second stage, gaining eight additional stage points.
In a strategy-filled final stint, Logano‘s crew chief Paul Wolfe called him to pit road for the final time on Lap 334 — the same lap that race leader Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Larson pitted. Denny Hamlin pitted 11 laps later to take advantage of the fresh tires late in the race.
With the checkered flag drawing near, Logano began chasing down Truex while holding off Hamlin. He closed the gap to within a couple of car lengths, but the caution flew when Kyle Larson spun off the front bumper of Bubba Wallace coming to the white flag. The race was pushed to overtime.
Hamlin‘s No. 11 team, which is the fastest pit crew in the Cup garage, gained him two positions on pit road. Logano dropped to third, still with a realistic shot of winning. When the green flag flew, he passed Truex quickly, but didn‘t have enough time to get to Hamlin.
The runner-up finish was Logano‘s first top-five effort of the season. It‘s his best result since finishing runner-up to Truex last July at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
“It was nice to be there and see it, race for [the win],” Logano said. “It hurts so much to be close there to a win. It‘s been a while since we‘ve won the race. You see one that close and you don‘t know when the next opportunity is and you want to capitalize on it. Didn‘t get a good enough restart or a good enough pit stop and we gave it away.”
Logano picked up 49 points throughout the 400-lap race, matching his total from the previous two weeks at Bristol Motor Speedway and Circuit of The Americas combined. He leaped three spots in the regular season championship standings to 19th, now just 14 points below the elimination line.
“We need some momentum,” Logano said. “We need to start working our way back up in points.”
The series heads to Martinsville Speedway next, where Logano is no slouch, either. His last 10 trips to the track have all results in top 10 finishes.
