Logano Survives Texas

Joey Logano performs a burnout after winning at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon. (Photo: Larry Papke/AP)

Wurth 400: Joey Logano won the Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon surviving a chaotic Stage 3 littered with cautions to snag his first win of the 2025 campaign. The win is Logano's 37th of his career and locks him into the 2025 playoffs allowing him a shot at defending his 2024 Cup Series title. As Logano pointed out during his celebratory interview, the win is also AAA's first win on the Cup circuit after a lengthy partnership with Penske and Logano on the side of the 22 Ford.

The race was what Texas has been the last few years: a slow start with no much hope only to be saved by chaos late in Stage 3 as drivers became more aggressive on moves with pit strategy shaking things up. This caused drivers to bust their ass and took several really strong cars out of the race. Now, I get it, you can't really pass especially if you're on equal tires. Dirty air is still way to prevalent, the car sucks, the track is quirky and not quite wide enough, and that damn bump in turn 4 is excessive. However, all these factors coupled with pit strategy of two tires vs. four tires made it a compelling and entertaining race. I still miss old Texas. I get the repave was necessary, but I am not a huge fan of this layout. If it had been the old layout I believe the racing would have been better. However, with what we're dealing with and no serious interest by SMI to redo the track or NASCAR to make any meaningful changes to the car and/or tire compound, we had a pretty good race. The strategy play made it worthy to follow along, the aggression in stage 3 alongside the cautions and attrition made the race entertaining to watch. And at the end of the day, Joey Logano survived, battled hard all day to put himself in position to win, capitalized, and earned the win. While I wouldn't say this was a great race, and a stretch to a good race, it was a satisfactory race. Still a number of changes to be made would make it better, I'm not going to stand on my soapbox and cry about it. We had something worthy to watch and stay tuned in on this week and for that, we should be thankful.

Next up we head to Kansas Speedway with the Trucks and Cup Series while the Xfinity Series enjoys a two week break. The Craftsmen Truck Series leads the weekend off on Saturday evening at 7:30 p.m. on FS1 with the Heart of Healthcare 200. The Cup Series caps off the weekend Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. on FS1 with the AdventHealth 400.

Kansas Picks: Trucks = Corey Heim

Xfinity = OFF

Cup = Tyler Reddick