Controversy abounded in NASCAR this week, but what wasn’t to love about door-to-door racing, physical racing down the stretch and a driver guaranteeing another wouldn’t win the championship?
Can we go to Martinsville every week?
Joey Logano was the winner of Sunday’s Cup race, regardless of how accepted that was across the grandstands and in the pits of Furniture Row Racing. He became the first to punch his ticket to the championship round.
In a season dominated by Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick, Logano, despite only winning twice, has come as close to anyone to matching their performance this season. He ranks third to those two with 24 top-10 finishes (he’s two behind both of them, but it’s four back to the driver with the fourth-most).
And his 10.4 average finish also ranks third in the series, a half-spot better than Martin Truex Jr.
That’s a pretty good stat, but I’ve got three more from the weekend that was.
Logano’s still pretty young
Amidst all the fun of Chase Elliott, 22, winning twice in the playoffs, and Ryan Blaney picking up his second career win at age 24, it’s easy to forget Logano is only 28 years old.
He arrived in the Cup series at such a young age, so it seems like he’s a seasoned veteran at this point. But Logano’s still seemingly on the upside of his career.
Sunday’s win at Martinsville was the 20th of his Cup career, a mark that only 41 drivers in series history have reached.
And among those 41, Logano is the fourth-youngest at the time of his 20th win. Only Jeff Gordon, Richard Petty and Kyle Busch were younger. All three of them were 25 when they won their 20th.
Only two other drivers have reached 20 wins before turning 30, and both were 29 for their 20th win: Fireball Roberts and Junior Johnson.
Hot dog! It’s a last-lap pass
Sunday’s race was the third time in the past five races that we’ve seen a last-lap pass for the win. Blaney took advantage of more Truex-related drama at the Charlotte Roval, and Aric Almirola got the win at Talladega when Kurt Busch ran out of fuel.
The last time there were three last-lap passes for the win in a five-race span came early in the 2014 season. The winners of those races were Brad Keselowski (at Las Vegas), Kyle Busch (at California), and…of course… Logano at Texas.
This is the second straight year that the playoff race at Martinsville ended with a last-lap pass. Kyle Busch was the beneficiary last year, passing Denny Hamlin, who also took the lead in controversial fashion, moving Elliott out of the way.
But let’s not get used to this type of finish at Martinsville. Before 2017, the last Cup race at the track that had a last-lap pass for the lead came in September 1987, when Darrell Waltrip passed Dale Earnhardt after a three-way battle for the lead involving Terry Labonte.
Truex nearly came from the back of the pack
On the other side of that last-lap pass was Truex, who ended up finishing third after Hamlin passed him getting to the line.
Truex failed post-qualifying inspection, so he actually started the race 33rd after posting the sixth-fastest time in the final qualifying session.
Race winners starting that far back isn’t normal. There’s only been one race winner starting outside the top 30 over the past three seasons, that was Kyle Busch earlier this season at Richmond. And nobody has won starting as far back as Truex started since March 2015, when Jimmie Johnson started 37th at Atlanta.
The only race winner at Martinsville to start that far back in 140 races at the track is Kurt Busch, who started 36th for his win in October 2002. He’s actually the only recorded race winner at the track who started outside the top 25.
In 147 all-time playoff races, there have only been six instances of a driver starting 30th or worse and winning, and very strangely, the last three were all the same driver — Hamlin, who came close to taking advantage at Martinsville.
The last time Hamlin did it was in 2012 at New Hampshire, when he started 32nd.