A week earlier as the NASCAR Cup Series’ world turns, the forecast was for Talladega Superspeedway’s calamitous tendencies to shake up the state of affairs.
Turns out, the NASCAR-sphere just needed to wait a week.
After a relatively tame event — by Talladega standards — a week ago, Texas Motor Speedway did its best impression of a chaos creator in Sunday’s Würth 400 presented by Liqui Moly. Joey Logano was one of a handful of drivers to come away relatively unscathed, hoisting his first trophy of the season and becoming the seventh winner in 11 races this year.
Logano said he’d told his wife, Brittany, “Watch, we’ll go win this one,” after the way his recent run of luck had gone, topped by last weekend’s disqualification for a Talladega technical infraction. How about a prediction on Sunday’s rash of wrecks? “I didn’t tell her that part,” Logano said.
RELATED: Race results | Logano lands Texas win
Plenty of other contenders had their chance to lasso the Lone Star State oval’s prize. Of the 13 drivers who led laps in Sunday’s race, eight were involved in crashes, collisions or spins. Two others found trouble with pit-road penalties. The list of would-be front-runners was a long one.
In the end, Logano’s sailing was relatively smooth while many others found the going treacherous in the Texas chop. Post-race, the defending Cup Series champ couldn’t pinpoint exactly why.
“I think there’s a few reasons, and I don’t drive their race cars, right?” Logano said. “A lot of it could be setup choice. There’s definitely guys that I think have the ability to drive their car a little bit more on edge, and they’re willing to take that risk a little bit more at times. That’s either going to be good for you or bite you. That bump down in (Turns) 3 and 4, it’s brutal. Everybody is down on their rear limiters as much as they can be. If you are a little free and it hits the limiter, it’s gone. There’s no opportunity to save it.
“You’ve got to think of risk versus reward throughout the race. Not just on pit strategy, but when you are trying to pass somebody, how hard is it worth pushing it here to make a pass, and what is the ultimate goal? There’s times you’ve got to push your limitations, and there’s others you’ve got to stay within reason. Everybody does something different, but to answer your question, I can’t say why. I have some thoughts, but a lot goes into it. It’s not just the driver. It’s the setup as well.”
Be it setup, a mid-corner bump or difficulty maintaining the groove in the sweeping turns, Texas foiled both heavyweights and the lightly regarded. Points leader William Byron was predicted to win Sunday’s race in metrics and data analysis by Racing Insights, but a collision with Cole Custer on Texas’ tight pit road dinged his No. 24 Chevrolet. He fought on, but his streak of consecutive top-10 finishes ended at three.
MORE: Cup Series standings | At-track photos: Texas
Josh Berry intended to keep the hot hand on 1.5-mile tracks, leading 41 of the 271 laps. That’s where Berry was until his No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford found the bump in Turns 3 and 4 and crashed midway through Stage 2, leaving him to finish 32nd. Austin Cindric, last week’s winner at Talladega, led 60 laps early and won Stage 1 in a bid to go back-to-back in Victory Lane. A multicar jam-up with 24 laps left spoiled those hopes. And Michael McDowell, eager to add a Texas Motor Speedway memory other thanhis dramatic qualifying crash from 2008, gave it his all with superb late-race restarts, a two-tire stop that vaulted him up the leaderboard and hunger for his first Cup win in nearly two years. His bold move to try to stave off Logano didn’t stick, and neither did his No. 71 Chevrolet in a crack-up that prompted the last of 12 cautions, sending the race to overtime.
In the end, Logano vaulted into the ranks of the Cup Series Playoffs ticket-punchers, and the rest of the provisional postseason picture went wild with movement. Of the 26 drivers ranked fifth to 30th on that chart, all but four had at least one spot gained or lost. Part of that is the Texas turn of events, but it also speaks to how tightly woven the standings are, 11 races into the season.
Another 1.5-mile track looms on the Cup Series’ calendar in Kansas Speedway, host of another 400-miler this Sunday (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). That’s another week to wait and see if the Texas turmoil deferred from Talladega carries over.
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