Joey Logano explains to Dale Earnhardt Jr. how he saved fuel for improbable win at Nashville

Joey Logano won the Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday despite running extremely low on fuel. While speaking with Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the Dale Jr. Download podcast, Logano talked about how he saved fuel to earn his first victory of the season.

“It’s no different than if you wanted to save fuel going down the road,” Logano said. “The first thing you do is eliminate the brake pedal. The brake pedal is the No. 1 fuel mileage killer. There’s a few things that went into allowing us to run as long as we did. For one, I think there’s 40-something laps of caution within that 110-lap window. That helps a lot. You can save so much gas under caution.

“You look at in-car cameras, everyone’s got the engine off. You’re coasting, so the more you can coast obviously helps with that. The fact that we weren’t as far forward as some of the other cars we were racing at the end of the race when we started that run, the further back you are, the pace is a little bit slower, you’re burning a little less fuel.”

Logano added: “How packed do you get the fuel cell? How good did you gas man do? How long did it take to get that flow rate up and make sure that you got it packed? It really takes the whole team to make fuel mileage the best as possible and get as many laps as possible.”

Joey Logano talks about the wild finish at Nashville

Logano won a race that featured five overtime restarts. After the race, he was asked if he was ever involved in a finish like he dealt with on Sunday.

“Not that comes to mind. Nothing that comes to mind that was like that,” he said. “Yeah, like I said, just a big one. Something that’s cool, too, is the last eight weekends, Team Penske has put a car in Victory Lane across all the series that they race. We were the only ones that could do it this weekend because we were the only ones running. It was close, but it was cool to keep that streak alive for everyone at the race shop.”

The victory gives Logano a ticket to the Cup Series playoffs. He is no stranger to being a Cup Series champion as he’s won the title in 2018 and 2022.