LEBANON, Tenn. — Joey Logano didn’t know the numbers because, he said, “I didn’t have a computer in front of me.” Crew chief Paul Wolfe felt like he was riding a rollercoaster, each ensuing overtime restart pushing the limits of how far Logano could stretch his fuel.
Logano was trying to finish Sunday night’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway by going the final 110 laps on one 20-gallon tank of fuel. Greatly complicating the situation: The race was extended out due to cautions, necessitating a Cup-record five overtimes. And by the estimation of Wolfe and his engineers, Logano should’ve only been able to go maybe 80 laps or so. The race went 31 laps beyond its scheduled distance.
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The decision whether to pit during a late-race situation is fraught with challenges. Perhaps no set of circumstances elicits more second-guessing of a crew chief than this one, particularly with what Logano and Wolfe were facing Sunday night.
At stake by staying out was the opportunity to score a victory that effectively locks Logano into the playoffs. But should he pit, any opportunity to win would vanish, and with it, he’d remain very much in playoff limbo.
The decision to go for it worked. Logano won, snapping a 49-race winless streak.
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“That’s the risk that was to me a ginormous risk,” he said. “I mean, you pit and you go back out and you maybe can finish in the top 15, maybe, versus going for the win, but you can finish 35th. Makes it a pretty hard call. But gosh, when you’re winning the race, how do you not? Especially when you see the other (non-playoff) cars that were up there.”
Wolfe wasn’t the only one scratching his head during overtime trying to make sense of a situation where his driver’s fuel tank should’ve been bone dry, yet somehow wasn’t. Up-and-down pit road, crew chiefs were perplexed.
Multiple times Chris Gabehart came over the radio to tell Denny Hamlin that he should’ve hit empty, each instance prompting a discussion on whether Hamlin should pit out of the lead or remain on the track to continue squeezing every last drop he could from his fuel tank. Kyle Larson and his crew chief Cliff Daniels were having a similar conversation.
Both crew chiefs kept pushing it, the chance to go for a win too enticing to pass up. But one notable difference was that Hamlin and Larson were both already locked into the playoffs. Logano faced a more desperate scenario with only seven regular-season races remaining after Nashville.
Teams with wins are effectively playing with house money, their playoff spots assured because they’ve already won this season. So go for it; don’t worry about the consequences. Should the gambit fail, the thinking goes, you shrug your shoulders and move on by finding solace in the win(s) you already have in your back pocket.
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But only to some extent, as there are other goals within the bigger picture teams are trying to accomplish beyond just the impact on the playoffs.
“I’m trying to get Denny to 60 (career wins),” Gabehart said. “I’m trying to hang as many (victory) banners as I can possibly hang.”
Ultimately, Larson and Hamlin fell short on Sunday. They simply didn’t have enough fuel to avoid pitting.
Larson’s engine sputtered during an overtime restart, triggering a pileup behind him. He subsequently pitted, then rallied to finish eighth. And twice during overtime, Hamlin was painstakingly close to getting the win only for a caution to come just before he took the white flag that would’ve effectively clinched the victory. Eventually, he too had to pit.
“I’m surprised we lasted that many (overtimes), honestly,” Hamlin said. “Certainly stinks being 15 seconds from a win at the end and then 10 seconds from a win, and then to finish 12th. It’s just part of it.”
Afterward, Gabehart and Daniels were pragmatic. They smartly played the strategy game to best position their respective drivers, only for a chaotic ending to work against them. Sometimes you can do everything right and still not win.
“You want to take advantage of any opportunity you get, that’s what this racing boils down to now, if you get an opportunity, you have to take advantage of that,” Daniels said. “That moment, the execution of that and, and so there is that side of it, then there’s also the side of it of. ‘Well, we’re third, and if we try to take advantage of the moment and things don’t work out, we may not be third.’ So it’s a juxtaposition.”
Said Gabehart: “You just get used to how to process it. And it hurts. But we had the winning race car. We’ve had the winning race car a million times before and not won — literally, it’s in the 20s. So it’s just part of it. You just process it like a big boy and you’re thankful that you have that kind of speed and can win every week, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out as you want.”
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Then there was Wolfe, who admitted by the fifth overtime restart he was numb. His emotional fuel capacity had hit empty, having run the gamut from thinking they had no chance to win to feeling like they had a glimmer of hope to thinking they had won to thinking they had again lost to actually prevailing.
This was a whole lot to process over the 30-plus minutes it took to complete the overtimes.
“It was nerve-racking, for sure,” Wolfe said. “Then by the last one, I was kind of numb to it at that point. … It was a big roller coaster of emotions there going through all those late-race overtime cautions.”
And wouldn’t you know it, as Logano sped underneath the checkered flag, he finally ran out of fuel. But at that point, it didn’t matter.
“Cross your fingers, say a prayer, and hope there’s just enough gas in it,” Logano said. “But I’m telling you what: There wasn’t a drop to spare.”
GO DEEPER
NASCAR Nashville Takeaways: Win-and-in system, overtime rules don't need fixing
(Top photo of Joey Logano crossing the finish line to win Sunday’s race: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
