RICHMOND, Va. — Over the last two months, the question about Joey Logano’s NASCAR season has suddenly gone from “Will he miss the Chase?” to “Can he win the championship?”
The way Logano looked at Richmond Raceway, it would seem foolish to count him out.
Logano’s remarkable midseason turnaround continued in a major way on Saturday night as the three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion put an exclamation mark on his resurgence, winning the race and skyrocketing to ninth in the points standings.
Here comes Joey! 📢@joeylogano beats @chasebriscoe to the line and wins for the third time at @RichmondRaceway! pic.twitter.com/y1fHN5MRNP
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) August 16, 2026
How much of a rise is that? Just six races ago at Sonoma Raceway, Logano was 20th in points. At the time, it seemed likely Logano wouldn’t even make the 16-driver postseason field in NASCAR’s first year after scrapping the old playoff format, in which Logano won all three of his Cup titles.
Well, he’s back. And now he has two more regular season races to move up the standings even further.
“Don’t let the boys get hot!” he said on the frontstretch after the race. “We’re pretty strong right now.”
That’s an understatement, particularly over the last four races. Logano won the North Wilkesboro Speedway short track race on July 19, then backed it up with a third-place finish in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.
Logano finished 14th last week at Iowa, but only because his team had a disastrous pit stop that cost him what seemed like a sure top-five finish (if not the win). Now Logano is back in victory lane again, and rounding into form just in time.
Of his five top-five finishes this season, three have come in the last four races. Now there’s virtually no mathematical chance Logano will miss the Chase field; he’s 142 points ahead of the cutoff line with two races remaining. The bigger question is how far he can rise.
“We’re getting the points we need,” Logano said.
Logano’s Team Penske teammates were also strong on a short track once again, with Austin Cindric getting a crucial third-place finish to boost his Chase hopes, Ryan Blaney leading 88 laps before fading to 13th, and affiliate car Josh Berry getting back-to-back top-10 finishes.
Cindric had perhaps the overall performance of the night. He had a highly disappointing race at Iowa last week and was just 29 points above the cutoff line entering Richmond.
But his third-place finish at Richmond, combined with a pair of fourth-place stage results, boosted him to 57 points above the cut with two races remaining.
“This was the kick in the a— this team needed, man,” Cindric said.
Meanwhile, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Chase Briscoe was disappointed after losing to Logano by 0.39 seconds. Briscoe had a three-second lead at one point, then started losing his brakes and allowed Logano to catch him just before the final green-flag pit stop.
Briscoe hounded Logano in traffic over the waning laps, but it wasn’t enough. And though you’d think a second-place finish and 171 laps led might come as a nice result for a driver who had never led a lap at Richmond or finished in the top 10 in nine previous starts, he was disappointed.
“It’s weird to be mad running second here,” Briscoe said. “Just to be that close and not get it done is still frustrating. Just wasn’t able to seal the deal there at the end.”
Meanwhile, the other big winner of the night was Trackhouse Racing driver Shane van Gisbergen, who secured a 14th-place finish to leave Richmond with a 50-point advantage over Ryan Preece for the final Chase spot.
Preece, a short track ace, was expected to make up ground at Richmond. Instead, he lost ground with a disappointing 17th-place finish and heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway in dire need of some major points before the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway in two weeks.
Austin Dillon, who had won the previous two Richmond races, was a surprising non-factor on Saturday night and finished 19th.
