Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Joey Logano's playoff success
Like many NASCAR fans, Dale Earnhardt Jr. is impressed and a little bewildered by Joey Logano and his knack for the playoffs. When the pressure is on, Logano steps up and in a big way.
Joey Logano won at Atlanta to open up the NASCAR Playoffs. He is on his way to the Round of 12 while everyone else will battle for the next 11 spots at Watkins Glen and Bristol.
On the Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt talked about the unlikely win for Logano.
“That was an interesting first race. Joey Logano comes out of nowhere like he does every fricking year,” the Hall of Famer said.
The thing is, he has done this multiple times. It’s one thing if he does it once or twice. But every even-numbered year, Logano steps up to the plate and makes a strong postseason push.
“This is not a new thing, this is exactly how his seasons have gone,” Dale continued. “I think even when he won the championship a couple years back, he was like a 12th-place driver all year.”
There is an argument to make that Joey Logano should be a championship favorite. When you compare him to the other drivers in the playoffs, only a few are clearly better. Logano can get hot and go on a run, and we might be in the middle of seeing that happen once again.
“If you look at the playoff grid, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take each car … just take each individual car, you’re going to put them out on the race track with Joey Lognao, who’s going to win? Head-to-head?” Earnhardt questioned his co-hosts. “There’s a lot of beatable cars if you’re Joey Logano. He’s not just dogs**t. I mean, if you look at him and say, alright, William Byron versus Joey Logano at Bristol, that’s pretty even, right? Pretty even money, right?”
Joey Logano has made noise in the postseason before. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see him doing it all over again. If Logano wins his third championship this season, three in the span of seven seasons, he will put himself in a category all his own.
Should Logano beat the odds and claim another Bill France Cup, it will be hard to dispute his dominance over the playoff era. With two titles and he already has a claim to it. Since 2014, Logano has only finished worse than 8th twice. He was 17th overall in 2017 before winning it all in 2018.
In 2023, Joey Logano finished 12th overall in the points but was eliminated in the Round of 16. Does he have a championship run up his firesuit sleeve?