{"id":54983,"date":"2025-10-05T18:30:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T23:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=54983"},"modified":"2025-10-05T20:40:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T01:40:50","slug":"joey-logano-continues-title-defense-after-tense-elimination-battle-with-ross-chastain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/05\/joey-logano-continues-title-defense-after-tense-elimination-battle-with-ross-chastain\/","title":{"rendered":"Joey Logano continues title defense after tense elimination battle with Ross Chastain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

The final 2025 Playoff transfer position literally came down to the last corner of the final lap of competition in Sunday\u2019s Bank of America ROVAL 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course \u2013 pitting one of the most exciting drivers in the sport, Ross Chastain, against the reigning series champion Joey Logano for that last position to move forward with title eligibility.<\/p>\n

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Ross Chastain, driver of the #1 Busch Light Chevrolet, and Denny Hamlin, driver of the #11 Progressive Toyota, spin after an on-track incident to finish the race in reverse the NASCAR Cup Series Bank of America ROVAL 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on October 05, 2025 in Concord, North Carolina. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Trackhouse Racing\u2019s Chastain certainly made a dramatic last-ditch effort to claim that final championship transfer position, running his Chevy hard into the final chicane and hitting the Toyota of Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Denny Hamlin in the final corner of the road course \u2013 the contact spinning both cars. As their cars sat facing backwards on track, Chastain put his No. 1 Chevrolet in reverse to zip past the checkered flag rear bumper first.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for him, in the immediate aftermath of the collision, three other cars got by – including Logano, who was able to secure the eighth and final championship transfer position after chasing Chastain for most of the race. Logano finished 20th and Chastain 21st.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s regular season champion Tyler Reddick, his 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace and Logano\u2019s Team Penske teammate Austin Cindric were also eliminated from championship contention following the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d re-start the whole day,\u2019\u2019 Chastain replied when asked what he would have done differently in Sunday\u2019s race, won by his Trackhouse teammate Shane Van Gisbergen.<\/p>\n

In addition to the final lap drama, Chastain uncharacteristically suffered a pair of pit road miscues \u2013 each costing him valuable positions on track during earlier portions of the race. He missed the hard left-hander exiting the pits following a stop during the Stage 1 break then was penalized for speeding on pit road on his final stop with 22 laps remaining in the 109-lap race.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust unforced errors,\u2019\u2019 a disappointed Chastain said. \u201cJust terrible. It\u2019s heart-breaking for almost 200 employees at Trackhouse. \u2026 everybody that makes us go around. [Team owner] Justin [Marks] hired me to carry this 1-car and drive it and be a leader and I just completely unraveled our day. We had the speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot acceptable. Just completely unacceptable,\u2019\u2019 said Chastain, adding. \u201cIt\u2019s terrible to get to this level and not perform. You watch, you learn and you study for half your life to get here and to fail is a terrible feeling right now. But I will wake up tomorrow and get right back to work.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

For his part, Hamlin said he had no idea the dire points situation Chastain was involved in at that point in the race. In fact, Hamlin said he didn\u2019t even know what points position the two were actually in on the last lap. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about anything going on,\u2019\u2019 Hamlin conceded. \u201cI wish I had known. \u2026 I don\u2019t fault Ross at all. I just wish I knew so I could have been prepared or made a different decision.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Shortly after climbing out of their cars on pit road, Logano and Chastain spoke to each other \u2013 ultimately exchanging smiles and pats on the back after the spirited competition on track.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tight, every spot,\u2019\u2019 Logano said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t think regular season races matter, look at that.  One point is the difference in making it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still alive, baby.  Now we\u2019ve got to win.  We\u2019ve got to win from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Chastain who was only a dozen points below the transfer line coming into the race, Reddick, Wallace and Cindric essentially needed to win to move forward in Playoff competition.<\/p>\n

But Reddick, in particular, looked poised for a dramatic turn after winning pole position in the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota. He led the opening three laps and finished 10th \u2013 best among the four drivers trying to race their way into a transfer position. But it wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if anything necessarily went wrong today for how the race was playing out,\u2019\u2019 Reddick said. \u201cWe wanted to prioritize setting up to win the race. I think you could pick it apart \u2013 a couple restarts and what not, just kind of, as the race unfolded our long run was not where it needed to be with the top guys.<\/p>\n

\u201cStage three there, we didn\u2019t make the progress that we needed too, so we kind of went long there hoping for a caution there, and lost a lot of spots, but at the end of the day, we were trying to set ourselves up for a caution late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallace finished 15th and Cindric, a renowned road course racer, ended up 37th in the 37-car field after essentially being collateral damage in an early-race incident.<\/p>\n

With the points re-set for the next three-race elimination round \u2013 with races at Las Vegas, Talladega, Ala. and Martinsville, Va. \u2013 Hamlin takes a two-point edge over Penske\u2019s Ryan Blaney to the Vegas 1.5-miler. Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron along with Hamlin\u2019s JGR teammate Christopher Bell are four points off the lead.<\/p>\n

Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Chase Briscoe and Hendrick\u2019s Chase Elliott are both 14 points back and Logano starts this penultimate round 24 points behind Hamlin.<\/p>\n

Logano is the defending winner of next Sunday\u2019s South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) Playoff race at Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service The final 2025 Playoff transfer position literally came down to the last corner of the final lap of competition in Sunday\u2019s Bank of America ROVAL 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course \u2013 pitting one of the most exciting drivers in the sport, Ross Chastain, against the reigning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":54986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[233,154,16],"class_list":["post-54983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-charlotte-motor-speedway","tag-joey-logano","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2239449912.jpg?fit=2499%2C1666","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-eiP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54983"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54993,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54983\/revisions\/54993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}