{"id":100794,"date":"2025-05-09T09:41:35","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T16:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=100794"},"modified":"2025-05-09T09:41:35","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T16:41:35","slug":"nascar-texas-recap-loganos-championship-hangover-is-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/nascar-texas-recap-loganos-championship-hangover-is-over\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Texas Recap: Logano&#8217;s Championship Hangover is Over"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"100796\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/nascar-texas-recap-loganos-championship-hangover-is-over\/logano\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"1000,530\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"logano\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano-300x159.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-100796\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano.jpg\" alt=\"NASCAR Texas Recap: Logano's Championship Hangover is Over\" width=\"1000\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano-300x159.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano-768x407.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/h2>\n<h2><strong>After a rocky start to the 2025 campaign, defending champion Joey Logano is back to his winning ways.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The Fords have been fast at the drafting tracks this year, and the stronger Ford teams \u2013 Penske and RFK \u2013 have shown a ton of speed. Notably absent from that conversation, however, has been defending series champion <strong>Joey Logano<\/strong>. All of that changed last weekend, however, when he pulled off a win at Texas Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n<p>With the renewed popularity of short track racing over the past several years, Texas Motor Speedway has been maligned more than any other &#8220;cookie cutter&#8221; intermediate. It doesn&#8217;t help that North Wilkesboro Speedway famously lost its date to Texas back in the 1990s, and a disastrous All-Star Race back in 2022 cemented its legacy as a crummy track with crummy racing to a whole new generation of fans.<\/p>\n<p>However, the NextGen car has made these intermediate tracks fun again. The racing at these 1.5 mile tracks is incredible, and last Sunday delivered a real thriller. It seems like all of the cautions we missed out on at Talladega showed up a week late, and numerous drivers found themselves wrecking out of the top five. At any given point, it was difficult to predict who would be in the right place at the right time to capitalize.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Cup Series at Texas Motor Speedway | NASCAR Official Extended Highlights\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/56lPYXD0xO8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Carson Hocevar<\/strong> snagged his first career Cup Series pole and held onto the lead until the first caution at lap 21 for a spinning <strong>Noah Gragson<\/strong>. Hocevar won his first Truck Series race here back in 2023; he finished 24th on Sunday. Talladega winner <strong>Austin Cindric<\/strong> would win Stage 1 under caution after <strong>Denny Hamlin<\/strong> lost his engine. On Lap 126, <strong>Josh Berry<\/strong> would spin from the lead, and towards the end of the stage, <strong>Chris Buescher<\/strong> would have a tire go down while running third. Like Stage 1, Stage 2 would end under caution, with <strong>Kyle Larson<\/strong> taking the win.<\/p>\n<p>At lap 246, <strong>Michael McDowell<\/strong> would take the lead after a caution and hold it through several accident-related restarts until lap 265, when he wrecked after throwing a late block on Logano. Logano would manage to hold onto the lead all the way to the checkered flag, despite a surging <strong>Ross Chastain<\/strong>. For Trackhouse fans, it was a regrettable reminder of the 2022 Championship 4 race at Phoenix. This Sunday, the Cup series heads to Kansas Speedway for the Advent Health 400. Remember to call your mom and wish her a happy Mother&#8217;s Day, or, better yet, watch the race with her. See you next week!<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: NASCAR<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>After a rocky start to the 2025 campaign, defending champion Joey Logano is back to his winning ways.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":100796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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":[3470],"tags":[127,41],"class_list":["post-100794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nascar","tag-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/logano.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-qdI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100794"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100801,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100794\/revisions\/100801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}