4 days agoJoey Logano has gotten a lot of criticism for being the first defending NASCAR Cup Series champion to fail to earn a top-10 finish in the first five races of the season, but that doesn't reflect how well he has run as the Penske cars seem to be a lot faster this year, and Logano has led large portions of four of the five races to date. However, while Logano was very successful at Homestead with the Gen 6 chassis -- most notably when he won the 2018 championship race -- he has never led a lap with the Next Gen chassis and has not finished better than eigth since 2019. Nonetheless, expect him to run better than he did in 2022 and 2024 since he likely threw those races away after clinching his Championship 4 spot at Las Vegas in both years to prepare for Phoenix. Now that this race is in the regular season in a year Logano is leading most races, he's probably a dark-horse contender to win as long as he can control this year's Stage 3 fades.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
2 weeks agoEven though Joey Logano is very expensive at $9,500, last fall's Las Vegas winner seems potentially poised to lead early and often since he qualified second directly outside Michael McDowell. Considering he is a vastly better intermediate driver and one of Las Vegas' foremost masters, he stands a good chance of earning a lot of points for leading and fastest laps, but he's still had a significant downturn in speed as his speed percentiles of 59.42 and 60.62 the last two years were his slowest ever as a Penske driver, and Ryan Blaney is routinely faster of late. However, he definitely seems faster than he was last year, and despite no top-10 finishes, he already has half of last year's laps-led total after four races. If you think Logano is going to dominate the race, he's a very valuable DFS option. But if you don't, he becomes avoidable.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
2 weeks agoTeam Penske's Joey Logano will start on the outside lane of the front row this week for Phoenix as he qualified second for the Shriners Children's 500. This will be the eighth time in his Cup career that Logano will start in the front row in a race at Phoenix. In 32 races at the Arizona track, Logano has four wins and 17 top-10 finishes. Logano is the most recent race winner at the site, having won the November 2024 race to win the 2024 Cup Series championship. In practice, Logano ranked fifth in overall lap averages while displaying top-10 speeds in all other categories, including third in the 25 and 30-consecutive lap average categories. Phoenix is one of Logano's better tracks, and based on his practice speeds and track history, he should be expected to compete for the win.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
4 weeks agoAfter having potentially race-winning speed in both drafting track races, Joey Logano starts the meat-and-potatoes portion of the NASCAR Cup Series season with a 23rd-place qualifying run at Austin. That sounds rather bad in a vacuum, but the Fords were absolutely miserable in qualifying as only Todd Gilliland qualified in the top 15 and Logano actually outqualified both of his teammates. However, there is some evidence the Fords might be somewhat faster in the race. Although Logano himself only ranked 16th and 22nd in practice, his teammates Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney both made the top ten in the first and second practices respectively, which may mean Logano could have more speed in the race so there might be DFS value there. However, his average finish at Austin is only 18.3 and is average running position is only 16.7 with this car, so don't count on it.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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