The Inside Line: Logano the one to beat in the Chase?

(SportsNetwork.com) – Winning two of the last three races, Joey Logano might just be the favorite to win the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Brad Keselowski, who is Logano’s teammate at Team Penske, won the Chase-opener on Sept. 14 at Chicagoland. Logano scored the victory one week later at New Hampshire and then took the checkered flag this past Sunday at Kansas. Jeff Gordon won the Sept. 28 race at Dover.

Kansas was the first of three races in the second round of the Chase, known as the Contender Round. The Sprint Cup Series will compete at Charlotte on Saturday night and then run at Talladega, the only restrictor-plate track on the playoff schedule, on Oct. 19.

Logano’s win at Kansas not only gave him the points lead but also clinched him a spot in the Eliminator Round, which includes the races at Martinsville (Oct. 26), Texas (Nov. 2) and Phoenix (Nov. 9). After the Talladega, the Chase field will be trimmed from 12 drivers to eight.

Just four drivers will remain in the Chase when the series has its season- finale on Nov. 16 at Homestead. If any one of the eight championship-eligible drivers in the Eliminator Round wins at Martinsville, Texas or Phoenix, that person will automatically advance into the “final four.”

Logano won this year’s spring race at Texas. His team recently tested there.

“We’re excited about our shot to win this championship this year,” Logano said. “We’ve just got to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

Having won at New Hampshire and Kansas and placing fourth at both Chicagoland and Dover, Logano has the best average finishing position among all drivers in the first four races of the Chase.

Under the previous playoff format (2004-13), Logano would have a pretty sizeable lead in the championship point standings. Right now, he’s just six points ahead of second-place Kyle Busch, who finished third at Kansas.

After the opening round of the Chase, the Challenger Round, had concluded, each of the 12 drivers competing in the Contender Round had his points reset to 3,000. The eight competitors for the Eliminator Round will have their points adjusted to 4,000 points.

Each driver in the final four at Homestead will have his points total set to 5,000. The highest finisher among them in that race will win the Sprint Cup championship.

“If you look at the first four races, we have an average finish of 2.5,” Logano said. “At that point, you don’t ever want to see points washed away. You want to run that all the way to the end. But the fact is it’s not like that this year. We need to be able to get wins like this to keep this going on to the next round. It’s going to get washed away. It’s like that for anybody.

“But if I was in a different position and you just make it in, say you’re eighth and you just make it in, you’re going to want the points washed out and have a shot at it.”

Logano and Keselowski have the most wins in the series this season with five each. Keselowski, the 2012 Sprint Cup champion, is in jeopardy of not making it into the Eliminator Round following his 36th-place finish at Kansas. He was one of several drivers who crashed into the wall after suffering a blown tire.

Keselowski is currently 10th in the point standings, followed by Hendrick Motorsports drivers Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson, the six-time and defending series champion. Earnhardt also made contact with the wall due to tire failure, while Johnson was involved in an accident with Greg Biffle in the early going.

At age 24, Logano is in his second year as driver of the No. 22 Ford for Roger Penske’s team. He made the Chase for the first time in 2013, finishing eighth in points. He had finished no better than 16th in the standings during his first four years in Cup competition (2009-12) while driving the No. 20 car for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Logano is having by far his best season in Sprint Cup competition. Prior to this year, he had just three race wins in his Cup career. The Middletown, Connecticut native holds the series record as the youngest race winner, doing so at age 19 years, 1 month and 4 days when he won at New Hampshire, his home track, on June 28, 2009.

Logano has been paired with crew chief Todd Gordon since the start of the ’13 season. Gordon’s first year as a crew chief in Sprint Cup was in 2012, with drivers A.J. Allmendinger and Sam Hornish Jr. at Penske.

“We’ve had some phenomenal wins this year,” Gordon said. “I think when you look through it, I can tell you that every race we’ve won has had some special features to it. (Kansas) is huge because it puts you through to the next round. Loudon (New Hampshire) was huge because that’s a place we purely struggled in 2013.”

Just days after Logano’s win at New Hampshire, Team Penske announced that Logano had signed a multi-year contract extension with the organization.

“I think Joey has matured, and he’s certainly a team player,” Roger Penske said after Logano’s victory at Kansas. “He’s got a great sponsor in Shell- Pennzoil, and they love him. I think what we have to do is Todd and the rest of us give him the car. You can see that he can run up front with the best, and to me with the two people we have, I wouldn’t trade ’em.”

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