NASCAR Atlanta takeaways: A Walmart-sign what-if and resetting the title favorites

HAMPTON, Ga. — Five thoughts after Sunday’s 2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway …

1. Taking Stock

When most drivers talk about their “home track,” they refer to the place closest to where they grew up — perhaps even a track where they attended races with family as a child. The glory of winning a race at a venue where they sat in the stands as a dream-filled kid is more powerful than just about anything but a Daytona 500 or championship victory.

But few drivers have actually lived at a racetrack, which makes Joey Logano’s Atlanta Motor Speedway history all the more meaningful. There’s nothing like winning at Atlanta for Logano, a Connecticut native who moved south in search of better opportunities to race as a young prodigy.

He first arrived at Atlanta as a 9-year-old, when his family pulled through the tunnel in a motorhome and saw what was to them a palace of speed. He was racing quarter midgets at the time, and AMS happened to have a quarter-mile track on the frontstretch with weekly racing.

The Loganos ended up moving into a home in Alpharetta, a city north of Atlanta. But AMS is south of Atlanta and, for as much racing as the Loganos wanted to do, living in one of the speedway’s condominiums overlooking Turns 3 and 4 made more sense.

So Logano and his father, Tom, spent the majority of their time staying in Unit 805. Young Joey would race quarter midgets and dream of going straight down the big track into Turn 1 instead of making a left turn back toward pit road on the quarter-mile track.

One day, Logano did get to go straight. But not exactly with permission. Roush Racing had given Logano, then a 14-year-old, a Cup Series car to make laps. Logano would go test with Mark Martin at local short tracks, he recalled, “just for fun.”

A friend was running the AMS infield road course while testing for the Rolex 24, so the Loganos asked then-track president Ed Clark if they could make some laps as well. Sure, Clark said.

“They thought we were racing a Legend car (and) thought we were going to run laps on the quarter mile,” Logano said. “We unloaded a Cup car. They didn’t like that. That wasn’t too cool in their book. They gave me this lap time that I couldn’t exceed, and it was a very slow lap time. I had to run a fast corner and that’s it.”

Just before lunch, Tom Logano told his young son: “Screw it, Joe. Just go. They’re going to throw us out. I don’t care. They’re going to black-flag you. Just go until it runs out of gas.”

So he did, and as Joey recalled, “we got thrown out.” And apparently that wasn’t the only time, either.

But as Logano sat in a chair in the AMS media center Sunday night, he caught a glimpse of himself on the closed-circuit TV showing the postrace news conference — a channel available to those who live in the condos, too. He remembered being a teenager and watching other drivers of that era in the same seat after their wins.

“Pulling into victory lane here is obviously one of the most special things to really put all that together,” he said. “Definitely a lot of fun stories. We’ve been thrown out of here a few times. But they can’t throw me out today.”

2. What If?

Here are some alternate storylines we’d be talking about today had a few things unfolded differently.

• If a Walmart sign doesn’t fall onto the track: It’s hard to say if Logano still would have won, but when the sign came loose and brought out the yellow flag with just 10 laps remaining, it halted what had been an exciting 39-lap green-flag run to the finish. At the time, Daniel Suárez and Ty Gibbs had been trading the lead. Gibbs then missed a block on a later restart and finished 17th, while Suárez ended up second (but rued the missed opportunity). Did Gibbs think he could have won without the sign falling down? “I don’t believe in hypotheticals,” said Gibbs, who is only one point above the cut line. “I’m just mad I didn’t block right.”

• If Ross Chastain stays connected to Suárez: Although the Penske duo of Logano and Ryan Blaney lined up together on the preferred inside lane for the final restart, Trackhouse Racing teammates Suárez and Chastain may have had an advantage on the top. Why? Because Blaney also wanted to win the race for himself, while non-playoff driver Chastain was going to be a loyal and dedicated pusher to his championship-eligible teammate. “The one difference there is you had their car that was in the playoffs in the front,” Logano said. “You knew Ross was just not going to make the move. There’s definitely a little bit more commitment there. You have one car that really matters. … That changes the game a little bit.” Unfortunately for Suárez, Chastain got loose and became disconnected, and the Penske teammates’ plan prevailed.

• If Austin Cindric’s pit crew doesn’t make a costly mistake: Cindric led a career-high and race-high 92 laps and looked smooth doing it. Only a bad pit stop after winning Stage 2, which dropped him from the lead back into the 20s, thwarted his day (although he still came back to finish 10th). Cindric has now led double-digit laps in seven of the last eight superspeedway races, including six in a row, but it was bittersweet considering his Team Penske teammates finished first and third on Sunday with equally fast cars. “We had a car capable of winning the race today, but just couldn’t quite get back up through the field,” Cindric said. “I wish we obviously had that pit stop back going into Stage 3.”

3. NASquirks

All along, it has seemed the race teams would not have much leverage in their charter extension negotiations with NASCAR if they didn’t stick together. After all, what is an individual team going to do — give up tens of millions of dollars by letting their charters lapse? And then what? It doesn’t seem like teams would want to throw away their playoff eligibility by missing a points race, and the threat of missing an exhibition like the Clash doesn’t seem to be anything NASCAR would be concerned with.

NASCAR chairman and CEO Jim France acted accordingly, refusing to cede much ground throughout the negotiations. The divide-and-conquer strategy appeared successful, along with a bit of strong-arming. And as of Friday night, after a threat to revoke charters, France got 13 of the 15 current owners to sign their names to the extension agreement.

But the next steps are far from clear after 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports decided to hold out. 23XI co-owner Curtis Polk told a small group of reporters on Sunday that his team has no intentions of signing the agreement as is, and he would not rule out legal action — nor would he rule out racing in 2025 without charters.

So could it be that the actual leverage in this case is dragging NASCAR to court? Such a move could cause a protracted legal battle, but it could force NASCAR to open its books and reveal the finances of what has been a closely-guarded family business.

Of course, it would come at a high cost — in the short term to 23XI, which could lose close to $100 million in current charter values, and in the long term to NASCAR, which could be forced to change how it does business based on the outcome of the case. Perhaps there’s still time for an agreement to be reached before such drastic measures are taken, but if there’s anyone with enough money to make a statement by giving up charters out of principle and taking NASCAR to court for it, it might be Michael Jordan.

It’s also not a coincidence he’s not exactly known as someone who likes to lose.

In this space throughout the playoffs, we’re taking a look at the current power rankings for the Championship 4 and comparing them to our pre-playoff picks (Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney).

1. Bell (pre-playoffs: 1): We know Bell has speed on the “normal” tracks, but now he has back-to-back top-four finishes on superspeedways as well. Does this team have any weaknesses at the moment?

2. Blaney (pre-playoffs: 4): Yes, his teammate won the race. But Blaney also had such a strong car that he drove up through the field even after getting crash damage and was still fast enough to push Logano to the victory.

3. Reddick (pre-playoffs: 2): Not the clean day you’d want to see after he got damage on pit road, but largely escaped a possible landmine race unscathed with a sixth-place finish.

4. Larson (pre-playoffs: 3): Yikes. Good thing he had the most points as the top seed, because Larson already needed to use a bunch of them after he violently snapped into the wall and crashed out of the race while running third.

Honorable mention: William Byron, Logano, Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin.

5. Best of the Rest

A look at the top non-playoff performers on Sunday:

• Kyle Busch: Another week, another chance at a win for a driver seeking his record-extending 20th consecutive season with a victory. Busch lined up third on the penultimate restart and his team had debated which lane to take. He ultimately chose the bottom, but it didn’t work out and he fell back to 10th before another caution flag waved to set up overtime. Busch ultimately finished seventh, the only non-playoff driver in the top 10. “Certainly felt like we had a shot to win,” he said. “Felt as good, or better, than (Suárez’s chances), so I was just hopeful we could keep that track position. Just lost a little bit too much there on that second-to-last restart.”

• Daniel Hemric: The Kaulig Racing driver finished 11th, his third straight finish of 11th or better on a superspeedway. Though it’s been a quiet season overall for Hemric (who is 30th in points), he has four top-10 finishes — the same amount as more-discussed drivers like Cindric, Todd Gilliland and Carson Hocevar.

• Justin Haley: It says a lot that people yawn over a 12th-place finish from a Rick Ware Racing car, but this was still Haley’s second-best finish of the season (behind two ninth-place finishes in the spring). Haley’s average finish so far this season (22.9) is 4.1 positions higher than any other driver who has made double-digit season starts for RWR in team history.

(Top photo of Joey Logano taking the checkered flag Sunday: Logan Riely / Getty Images)