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How Joey Logano's win shows the irrelevance of a longtime racing adage


It’s time for the phrase “race him like he races me” to go away. At least during NASCAR’s playoffs.

Martin Truex Jr. was clean – or timid, if you prefer – over the final six laps of Sunday’s race at Martinsville. Joey Logano was aggressive. Or dirty, if you want to go that far. As Truex took pains to avoid moving Logano out of the way over the last six laps, Logano used his bumper to move Truex out of the way and won a drag race to the finish.

“I didn’t crash him,” Logano said. He’s now guaranteed a berth among the four drivers racing for the title at Homestead on Nov. 18. “We raced hard. I moved him out of the way. Did I move him up four lanes on the racetrack? No, I moved him enough to get my nose under there. That’s what happened.”

“I was next to him for six laps,” Truex said after getting out of his race car. He’s one of seven drivers still vying for the three other spots. “I never knocked him out of the way. We were going to race hard for it in my book. I cleared him fair and square. We weren’t even banging doors for me to pass him. He just drove into the back of me and knocked me out of the way. That’s short-track racing, but what goes around comes around.”

It’s possible for both Truex’s reaction and Logano’s actions to be entirely justifiable. That seeming contradiction is probably the right way to comprehend what happened in the late laps on Sunday.

Truex is understandably frustrated with the outcome of Sunday’s race; it’s the second time in the playoffs that late-race contact has denied him a chance at the win. But he admitted after the race he knew Logano would be aiming for his bumper in the final two corners.


“I pretty much had the feeling going to the backstretch that that was going to happen and there was nothing I could do about it,” Truex said. He passed Logano in turns 1 and 2 on the final lap. “It sucks, but that’s the way it goes. I can promise you I won’t forget what he did.”

If Truex knew Logano was going to bump him out of the way, why is he so upset about it? And why did he put himself in a position for Logano to make that move? Granted, that’s a question asked with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. But Truex should have known before the last lap that Logano was going to use his bumper if he had the opportunity on the final lap.

Almost any driver would have. As he made clear, Logano did not dump Truex. He moved him. The two actions are far different. And he was under no obligation to let Truex take the win without a calculated last-ditch maneuver simply because Truex didn’t make contact with him earlier.

“That was the classic bump‑n‑run,” Logano said. “That was the move that our sport and Martinsville in particular was built on. I think I owe it to my race team to do everything I can to win a race, get another shot at winning a championship. That’s my job. They did their job today. I had to do my mine.”

The premise of racing a driver like he races you gives too much power to the instigator. Truex couldn’t race Logano like Logano raced him on the final lap because of the fear of retaliation. A driver isn’t going to do something with five laps to go on a short track that he would do with two corners to go. If Truex put the bumper to Logano before the final lap then Logano could have gotten back to him and exacted revenge.

And besides, Truex retaliated against Logano after the bump. He pinched Logano low off turn 4 – Truex might have been closer to the inside wall than the outside wall as the two exited the corner – in a last-ditch attempt to keep Logano from passing him. It didn’t work. Truex’s car slid and Logano got to the finish line first, just ahead of Denny Hamlin.

“I knew it was coming,” Hamlin said. “Everyone probably saw it was coming. I just think it would have been still a cool battle if they would have just stayed side‑by‑side. I think [Logano] thought he wasn’t going to win that way.”

Yeah, it would have been a cool battle if Logano and Truex had been side-by-side for the final lap. But Logano might not have won. And winning and making the playoffs is more important than cool or the entirely arbitrary boundaries of what is and isn’t right in modern stock car racing. So what if Truex was nice? Logano was going for a title.

Part of the reason everyone probably saw Logano’s move coming is that contact late in races with final-round playoff spots on the line has happened multiple times before in NASCAR’s playoff elimination format. Look at Ryan Newman’s wall slam of Kyle Larson in 2014 at Phoenix or Brad Keselowski’s aggressive move at Texas the week before. Or, if you want a more recent example, take a gander at Hamlin’s attempted bump-and-run on Chase Elliott at Martinsville a year ago.

Drivers have to seize opportunities at a title when they can. Truex knows this. Logano does, too. Truex’s disappointment may be magnified because he’s racing for a title with a team that’s disappearing at the end of the season and he’s been the victim of contact on more than one occasion in 2018. But that doesn’t mean Logano’s actions are illegitimate.

“Like I said, if I spun him out, I’d feel pretty bad right now,” Logano said. “I’d say I didn’t mean to do that, that was not the goal. That’s a different story. I think I’d be feeling a lot different right now.

“The fact that he still finished in the top three, we had a hard race, we raced the heck out of each other. He bumped me a couple times when he was trying to get by me. I get it. Don’t blame him. It’s racing.”

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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