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Bob PockrassNASCAR
MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Joey Logano punched his ticket to Homestead by roughing up Martin Truex Jr. in the final turns Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. Can he win the championship, though, if he races on the brink of clean versus dirty?
And on the flip side, can Truex win more championships being so nice?
It is somewhat hard to argue with Logano’s move considering what was on the line, a spot in the championship. He pretty much lowered his shoulder and bowled over the catcher coming to the plate for the winning run.
Was it nice? No. Was it clean? No. But a little bit of dirtiness can go a long way when trying to win a championship.
It also can get you dumped at a most inopportune time, as Logano learned three years ago right here at Martinsville when Matt Kenseth retaliated and severely damaged his championship hopes.
But it could be argued that it is still better to play the game and a driver must take advantage of any opportunities without worries of ticking off some competitors.
Truex comes off looking either as the most ethical driver ever or someone just too nice sometimes for his own good. Logano is on his way to Homestead and Truex, at least for the time being, isn’t.
“I’ve told Martin for a long time that he’s too nice, but I would be upset, too,” Dale Earnhardt Jr., a good friend of Truex, said on the NBCSN postrace show. “Joey is now hoping that Martin never gets that chance to get him back at Homestead.
“Joey’s hope is that he runs in the front at Homestead and Truex struggles.”
Logano tried to quiet talks of the move requiring retaliation.
“Every scenario is different,” Logano said. “If I spun him out, I’d feel pretty bad right now. That’s a different story. … The fact that he finished in the top 3, we had a hard race and we raced the heck out of each other.
“He bumped me a couple of times trying to get by me. I get it. Don’t blame him.”
Truex said he would not have made the move Logano did.
“I could have done it last fall and I didn’t,” Truex said. “I finished second to Kyle [Busch].”
But why not?
“Because I don’t race like that,” Truex said.
If Truex did race like that, if he had just dumped Logano or made more contact with him to take the lead, few would have blinked.
“He certainly could have done that and nobody would have thought any different of that,” said Denny Hamlin, who ended up finishing second.
Logano viewed his move as a classic bump-and-run. Truex didn’t. Who’s right?
“It depends on who is doing it,” Hamlin said. “If it’s your favorite driver, you love it. If you don’t, it’s dirty. I knew with two [laps] to go I was going to be in a great position to try to win this race because I knew they were going to get into each other.
“I had more faith the 22 [of Logano] was going to hit the 78 [of Truex] than I did the 78 hitting the 22. … When you’ve got a choice to make it, you make those choices.”
Obviously Logano and Truex have different driver codes, and that is what can make for great racing and a rivalry. Logano and his Team Penske teammate, Brad Keselowski, don’t have a long list of friends in the garage.
They are some of the nicest people off the track, but their willingness at times to go further with their bumpers has irked some competitors.
Good for them in the sense that no one should want to have happy competitors. If they can sleep at night with what they did, the trophies don’t say whether they were won clean or with a little bit of nasty.
“I owe it to my race team to do everything I can to be able to win a race and to get ourselves to have another shot at a championship — that is my job,” Logano said. “It wasn’t a move where I sent him up the race track to get underneath him.
“We bumped and banged across the line. That’s the way I wanted to do it to get a win.”
Truex indicates he wouldn’t have been able to sleep if he had made such a move. He doesn’t have a trophy. He said he should have been in victory lane, but it was Logano who was there. Logano did nothing against the rules. At least the written rules.
Moments after the race, Truex vowed that Logano wouldn’t win the championship and he will get Logano back if the situation comes up again. That probably will happen, but it might not until next year unless they are 1-2 at Homestead.
Logano said how Truex wants to handle this is up to Truex and Logano won’t let any issue of retaliation impact his focus. He did say he learned from the Kenseth situation to try to have some conversations in hopes that things don’t get too out of control.
“Obviously, we’ll talk some day,” Logano said. “When? Give me a minute. … It’s probably smart that we all probably cool off first. In general, this move is a very different move. We didn’t crash.
“We saw that move [I made] how many times? That’s what this race track is built on. I would be expecting the same thing if the roles were reversed.”
The bottom line is so what if a driver feels a little less proud of a win if the driver still has the trophy? Logano certainly was proud of this one even if others say he shouldn’t be.
“Every driver is going to have their own opinion and everyone in this room [of media] will have their own opinion,” Logano said. “That’s OK. It’s up to you guys to decide what you want. The facts are that it is over now and it is time to move on.”
The race might be over. But in racing, rarely do finishes like this one result in everyone just moving on. Drivers have memories. They can hold grudges. They can decide who wins trophies and who gets the big checks.
To be continued.