Logano may finally be tough enough to win a title

Now he must deal with the consequences. I was excited for him when he started winning at Penske and when he got that ride.

There is little debate about what Logano did Sunday. Matt Kenseth was able to continue in the race and was running in 14th at the restart.

“That was one of the hardest top 10s I’ve ever had to go through”.

“Late in the going I must have had an exhaust issue or something and just started laying down the power”. Kenseth was leading the race, with Logano closing ground quickly.

To a few, that’s a credit to Logano. He’s a hard-charger, an aggressive racer, one who will do whatever it takes to win a race and a championship. In the big leagues, catching is one thing and passing another.

Team owner Penske came to Logano’s defense by saying the ramming was not intentional – although Kenseth wasn’t accepting that explanation. After leading the most laps of the race, Matt Kenseth finished 14th.

Kenseth, who was desperate for a win after digging a deep hole with a 42nd-place showing last weekend at Charlotte in the opening race of the Contender Round, took a different view. That made him a long shot to advance to the next round without a win at either Kansas or Talladega. Jimmie Johnson finished third in the Hollywood Casino 400.

Kenseth was not wrong for blocking aggressively and Logano was not wrong being aggressive in racing for a win and reacting to the block that Kenseth threw at him. He was on his way to Round 3 until Logano wrecked him.

The new Chase created numerous conflicts last season, from a Kevin Harvick-instigated tussle between Jeff Gordon and Logano teammate Brad Keselowski to Kenseth tackling Keselowski in the garage over an unrelated incident at another race.

“There’s no place I would rather go next week”, said Earnhardt, one of the best restrictor-plate drivers in the series, and the victor at Talladega in the spring.

It was a win that in theory would have meant more to Kenseth. And he will have Logano to blame.

Sure, when he was 18 with the nickname “Sliced Bread” and a clear path to replace Stewart at Joe Gibbs Racing, it was easy for other drivers to resent Logano. The Championship 4 drivers will race in Homestead and Miami, which will ultimately determine this year’s Sprint Cup champion.

“All day we had him pretty good”.

“It’s not like he was alongside of me”, Kenseth said.

“You make decisions every day, you make decisions every minute behind the wheel”, Kenseth told NBC Sports after the race. To me, strategically, that didn’t seem like such a great decision for him but it’s the one he made and that’s how he wanted to win. If I get raced like that, I’ll race the same way. “I’m certainly not anymore”. As Kenseth approached lapped traffic his No. 20 machine slowed a bit and allowed for Logano to make a run.

“You always race people like you’d like to be raced. It’s real tough when it’s in this kind of a situation, but there was no question that Kenseth was doing everything he could to keep Joey from going by”. Kenseth blocked Logano which caused the No. 20 to touch the rear of Kenseth’s Toyota and spin. Edwards said it worked in the video game and it nearly worked in the race.

“It was just hard racing”. “I wanted that middle lane and so did he, and we collided there…it was hard racing”.

“You don’t like to see that, but if you go back and you look at it frame by frame, I don’t think you can just say Joey ran into him on goal”. However it was a costly period for two of the Chase contenders, with Kevin Harvick dropping to 23rd after serving a penalty for dragging a fuel can out of his pit stall, and Furniture Row Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. was also hard hit when penalised for an uncontrolled tyres. Nor did he have the precision in the pits that championship hopefuls need.

And from Logano’s perspective, whether he truly meant to wreck Kenseth – and he’s not admitting it if he did – he did what needed to be done for himself and his team. You can bet his name is mud right now at JGR.

Logano’s ramming had the ring of the ol’ Saturday night short track maxim. Nor will Kenseth or Busch, who would have nothing to lose by getting even with Logano. “I just felt like I raced hard”. That’s what we do. “That’s what we do… that’s what we do every week”.

No one can change how it went down, all that can be done at this point is move forward and see who is able to move into Eliminator 8. “These things always seem to happen every now and again, and you work it out, and you know, eventually it all comes out fine”.