NASCAR takeaways: Joey Logano opens playoffs with victory to make Round of 12

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HAMPTON, Ga. — Joey Logano dislikes the crashes and hard hits that are typical of NASCAR racing on drafting tracks. He pretty much says the racing at those tracks is fun until it’s not.

He never got to the no-fun moment as he enjoyed the thrill of winning Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, earning the 34th Cup race-winning trophy of his career and a spot in the quarterfinal round of the playoffs.

Logano, the leader going into an overtime restart, used a push from Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney on an overtime restart to retain the lead and held off spring Atlanta winner Daniel Suarez as well to capture the win.

“We all talked about how wildcard this round could be,” Logano said. “We knew that the Penske cars would be strong on the superspeedway style type racetracks. We’ve been all year long.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been caught up in every possible wreck on these type of tracks [previously this year].”

The four winless drivers who have the fewest points get eliminated in two weeks after races at Watkins Glen and Bristol, but Logano won’t have to worry about that thanks to the victory.

Takeaways from Atlanta where Logano, Suarez and Blaney were followed by Christopher Bell and Alex Bowman in the top-5.

Logano Bursts Into Playoffs

The Team Penske driver, a two-time Cup champion, had a relatively lackluster regular season, finishing 15th in the standings. His one victory that gave him a playoff bid came in a five-overtime chaotic race at Nashville.

“More times than not, excluding last year, we’ve been able to level up when we need to level up,” said Logano, who was eliminated in the first round last year. “To be able to fire off your first race of the playoffs with a statement win, it’s key.”

Logano doesn’t have to worry about the next two races except to earn potentially more playoff points that could help if he doesn’t win in the upcoming rounds.

“Some people are kind of born a certain way, like very competitive people,” Logano said. “There’s times that that bites me as much as it helps me.

“I feel like for whatever reason there’s always another gear in there. I try to reach it every race, but it just seems like the playoffs seem to work for us as a team.”

Bowman, Cindric, Suarez big gainers

Among the drivers to make the biggest jump in the standings as they try to advance to the next round were Suarez, Bowman and Austin Cindric (10th).

Bowman went from being tied at the cutoff to having a 27-point cushion, Cindric went from two points up to also being 27 points ahead of the cutoff and Suarez went from one point ahead to 22 points to the good.

Suarez was disappointed considering he was side-by-side for the lead in the final laps before he lost his push from teammate Ross Chastain.

“It was nice to run strong today, but when you are that close and obviously we had a good shot [to win], it’s never too fun,” Suarez said. 

Cindric earned 19 points in the stages while Bowman earned 16, helping boost their totals.

“Obviously it was a really big points day — I wish we would have had some things go a little better with 10 [laps] to go to be in a better position to challenge for the win,” Bowman said. 

Truex, Larson, Gibbs wonder what could have been

Kyle Larson, who entered the race atop the point standings with a 40-point cushion, now has just a 15-point cushion after his car snapped loose on him, he hit the wall and then was collected by Chase Briscoe. He finished with just one point for his 37th-place finish.

“I don’t know if that’s bad luck,” Larson said. “I just got loose. … It caught me way off-guard. I was never once in that same corner was loose.”

Truex was collected in an accident when Chris Buescher got loose and spun into Truex, who limped his car home in 35th. He is now 19 points behind the cutline.

His Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs looked like he might earn his first career victory as the leader with 10 laps to go. But he got shuffled out of the lead on a late restart and settled for 17th. He’s now just one point above the cutline.

“I was just too late [to block] — I take full responsibility for that,” Gibbs said. “I’m frustrated. … I just didn’t finish it and do a good job there so it’s my fault.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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