Dale Earnhardt Jr. shares 'the hard part to come to terms with' about Joey Logano's Las Vegas win
Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently opened up on his thoughts about Joey Logano's Las Vegas win last Sunday. The Team Penske driver won the first race of the Round of 8 and became the first driver to book his spot in this year's Championship 4 lineup.
Logano's win caught many by surprise because he was an unlikely winner, and his strategy centered around fuel-mileage became a big factor in the win. But what surprised Dale Earnhardt Jr. the most about his win was something related to Hendrick Motorsports.
"Joey Logano wins on strategy, I don't say it's a debate but there's two kinds of people in the NASCAR world, there's the ones that think Joey is just doing Joey things. Then there's the people that think that he doesn't belong there and doesn't deserve to be there," Earnhardt Jr. recently said on his podcast.
This led his show's co-host to claim that Joey Logano has had 'many dominos fall his way' this season. Andrew Kurland continued that one needs skill and one needs luck at this stage of the season, and in Logano's case, he's had loads of luck this year.
But the aspect of luck was one which Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he's okay with because to him 'that is sports'. What baffled Earnhardt was Logano capitalizing on Alex Bowman's loss.
"The only part that I can’t get over is – he wasn’t in until the #48 got penalized. And then he gets in through that penalty, and then he goes and wins. I mean, when the checkered flag fell at the Roval, him winning this race would have mattered none. But now, he’s going to race for a championship. That, to me, is the hard part to come to terms with," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. [52:08]
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was surprised by Joey Logano not long ago this year as well
While Dale Earnhardt Jr. expressed his surprise over Joey Logano's trajectory in the playoffs after Las Vegas, it wasn't the first time he had made that point.
After the first race of the playoffs, the Round of 16 opener at Atlanta which Joey Logano won, Dale Jr. claimed that the Penske driver came out of nowhere, which he usually does.
“This is not a new thing, this is exactly how his seasons have gone. I think even when he won the championship a couple years back, he was like a 12th-place driver all year," Dale Jr. described (via On3).
Interestingly, after his Las Vegas win, Joey Logano claimed that during the playoffs, the #22 team just turns up all their gears a notch. Logano didn't know exactly what are the specifics in which they begin to excel, but to him it is something that 'just happens.'
Logano pointed to the fact that he's historically had more wins in the playoffs compared to the regular season wins, which to him, is 'crazy.'