What a difference seven days makes for two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano. What a fuel tank.
What a Las Vegas miracle.
A driver who left the track eliminated from the playoffs one week ago left the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway the first driver to clinch a spot in the Championship 4. Making the most of Alex Bowman's disqualification, Logano brought a top-10 car to Sin City that snuck its way to the top in the final laps after making one less pit stop than everyone else.
"A little bit hard to believe at the moment, you know?" Logano's crew chief Paul Wolfe said after the race.
It was Wolfe, whose 41 victories are the most of any active crew chief, who decided to gamble in the heart of Sin City. Choosing to stretch mileage after a caution for Ty Gibbs' spin on Lap 194, he ran over 70 laps on one tank of gas while the rest of the leaders split that final run in two.
After stopping, the day's dominant driver Christopher Bell was a rocket ship on fresh tires, cutting the deficit to Logano from over 26 seconds to less than one by the finish. But it was Logano who paced himself perfectly, using help from wounded teammate Ryan Blaney to draft, then pass fellow fuel mileage gambler Daniel Suarez and take control of the race.
"I don't think there's a team out there that works better together than Team Penske," Logano said. "That is just in our DNA all the way through."
It was a moment that sent shockwaves through a field which didn't even have Logano in the initial Round of 8. Suddenly, the two-time champ has his sixth Championship 4 appearance, the most of any driver despite leading just 24 laps in his three wins.
In fact, Logano's 307 laps led this season are his fewest in any year since joining Penske in 2013. It doesn't matter. The No. 22 team figures out a way to win in the playoffs, continuing one of NASCAR's truly bizarre statistics: Logano has made the title race in every even-numbered year since 2014.
"There's been many years where the stats, it doesn't look too good," Logano explained, "But we've been able to capitalize when it matters. The Playoffs, we just turn the wick up. I don't know what exactly that is, but it just happens."
Traffic Report
Green: Alex Bowman. You've got to give Bowman credit. A driver so mad at his unexpected Charlotte DQ he threw his cell phone in the pool, triggering a 911 call got his mind together in time for a fifth-place finish at Las Vegas.
It's the fourth top-10 result in seven playoff races for a driver whose future with Hendrick Motorsports was questioned after a subpar regular season.
Yellow: Christopher Bell. Bell had the best car at Vegas by a country mile. Winning the pole, leading a race-high 155 laps and collecting 19 stage points leaves him a healthy +42 above the cutline with two races left until Phoenix.
But Bell had the best car and didn't win. That leaves him vulnerable in a season the No. 20 team has had its share of bad luck and ugly wrecks.
"I don't think I've come to terms with it yet," Bell said of the loss. "Just a bummer. Everyone on this team did everything perfect today… you are never safe in this deal. We needed to win today, and unfortunately, we didn't."
Red: Brad Keselowski. Aside from a runner-up Talladega finish, the 2012 Cup champ has been virtually invisible this fall. Crashing out early at Vegas, Keselowski now has six finishes outside the top 15 in seven playoff races, ahead of only longshots Chase Briscoe and Harrison Burton in the overall postseason standings.
Speeding Ticket: Daniel Hemric. It's been a weird last couple of weeks for Hemric, knowing his full-time NASCAR career may be ending as Kaulig Racing announced Ty Dillon will be taking over his Cup ride in 2025. Hemric's been outspoken on simply trying to "enjoy the ride" while putting together a reasonable audition for someone else (four top 20s in the last seven races).
But Hemric's contact with Austin Dillon, causing the No. 3 Chevrolet to turn hard right into the outside wall on Lap 61, thrust him into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. It was the hardest contact we saw on the 1.5-mile oval all weekend, leaving Dillon incensed at a good friend and a reminder at how there's plenty of battles being fought outside the eight-driver championship field.
"He flat-out wrecked me," Dillon said after the contact. "No clue why. He's got three races left, and I don't know if he was just over his head. He stays in the gas into (Turn) 3 until he hits me…"
Oops!
Last week, we wrote in this space how Tyler Reddick "thought" he was going to flip after running into another car at the Charlotte ROVAL.
This week? He actually did.
Reddick's No. 45 was among three playoff contenders wiped out by a wreck that started when a side-by-side battle between Martin Truex Jr. and Chase Elliott went wrong. Elliott lost it off Turn 4, collecting Reddick, Keselowski, Ryan Blaney and others in an incident that left the No. 45 doing a flip on the tri-oval grass.
"Once I recognized that there wasn't going to be enough room," Elliott said, "I bailed and there was just nowhere to bail… it was too late."
"I kind of saw them both [Truex and Elliott] have a moment," Reddick said of the action in front of him, "And I just had to split second make a decision."
It was the wrong choice, leaving the No. 45 Toyota inside the garage and creating separation within the Championship 4. Reddick, Elliott and Blaney are now all 30 points or more behind the cutline and will almost certainly need to win in order to make the Championship 4.