RICHMOND, Va. — Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin both reviewed the final lap of last year’s NASCAR Cup Series showdown at Richmond Raceway in recent days, all as part of the customary prep work for this season’s running. It wasn’t any easier to stomach the second time around.
“I did. It made me mad again,” Logano said with a hearty laugh, one aided by the passage of time. A year ago, the immediate reflection was not nearly as good-natured, not after Austin Dillon bowled through both Logano and Hamlin in the 0.75-mile track’s final set of corners to grab the checkered flag. The victory stayed in the record books, but three days later after an extensive review, NASCAR officials stripped the Cup Series Playoffs eligibility that Dillon stood to gain.
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Logano was among those with frayed emotions that Sunday night, and the recent revisit wasn’t the most pleasant.
“The result didn’t change, unfortunately,” Logano said, “but yeah, obviously, I have to rewatch things to prepare and things like that. But yeah, it’s a year ago, so you’ve got to move forward here at some point. So, just got to go get sweet redemption, right? Go out there and win the race that we had won.”
All the protagonists return to the scene for Saturday night’s Cook Out 400 (7:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App), the next-to-last race of the Cup Series regular season. Hamlin and Logano have secured playoff berths with regular-season wins, while Dillon — 28th in points — would need another last-gasp run to clinch one of the remaining spots.
Logano was sent spinning out of victory contention here last year after Dillon rolled deep into Turn 3, dispatching the No. 22 Team Penske Ford. That opened the door — however briefly — for Hamlin to burst into the lead, until another bump from Dillon’s No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet caromed his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota into the wall.
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Hamlin called his recent review of the final lap “just disappointing from my standpoint” and “just a wild moment,” but that the ruling that came later from NASCAR officials gave the drivers involved a better idea of which racing tactics remain above board, and which might cross the line into the realm of discipline and deterrence.
“I think NASCAR drew a line in the sand and said that was too far,” said Hamlin, a five-time winner at his home-state track. “I think that they have been better about drawing the line in the sand on certain things, like the right-rear hooks we have seen over the last year, them kind of drawing the line in the sand. They are not afraid to make hard decisions, and I think that is very, very important with the governing of the sport in general, so it is not a circus. I do feel a little bit better about it than we did 12 months ago.
“I just feel that I think certainly, that was the first time we‘ve seen something like that happen and then NASCAR had a precedent to set in the sense that — what do you from here. If you let that go, then you open up a floodgate of crazy things that could happen that would be bad for the relevance and the legitimacy of the sport, and so I think everyone probably has a little better understanding now, because of the ruling. I‘m not saying I agree or disagree with it, but you certainly have a better understanding.”
Wherever the sand-drawn line exists, Logano says the incident and the punishment have shaped how racing — especially in high-stakes situations on a tight, short track — goes forward.
“I’m not a big person that reads the rule book. I just look at how rules are enforced,” Logano says. “Well, if rules are enforced, then that’s a real rule. And NASCAR gets put in the spot occasionally to where they’re forced to enforce a rule, and depending on how they do that will set the tone for the future, whether that’s looking at restarts or looking at things like that. I think all of us drivers, all we want is consistency, right? And obviously that was pretty far last year, right? Both moves were — not just the first one but the second one. So I think every scenario is probably a little bit different. That one was pretty extreme, so probably pretty easy for them to make a call, but everybody, sometimes you wonder where the limits are, but you’ve also got to ask yourself, what’s your limits, right? What are you willing to do as a human in the race cars as well?”
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