Joey Logano and the #22 Team Penske team have to be the most blessed racing unit in the Cup Series garage at the moment. Having accepted their fate of crashing out the playoffs at the Roval to now securing a place in the championship with a win in Las Vegas, Logano has once again proved his mettle as a title contender.

The 2-time Cup Series champion didn’t have the best of the regular season run. However, in the postseason, none of that stuff mattered. Although his entry in the Round of 8 was possible because of Alex Bowman’s DQ, Logano was confident in his team’s ability. He even called himself an underdog before coming into the Vegas race, and his manifestation became a reality as he moved one step closer to winning his third championship.

Joey Logano’s even-year Championship 4 appearance streak continues

All he needed was a strategy call from his crew chief, and he was successful in fending off a late charge by Christopher Bell. If Bell had a lap or two more, we could be talking different scenarios. But the #22 team perfectly executed his strategy, and maybe the even-year theory is indeed true after all. Coming into the Penzoil 400 race, Joey Logano didn’t believe in the even-year theory or any other superstition. “No, I don’t think that way. It’s pretty ironic, though. I don’t know; we’ll see.”

Ever since the elimination format started in 2014, the Penske star has reached the Championship 4 in every even-numbered year. And today marked the sixth instance of even-year magic working in Logano’s favor. And after this triumph, even he’s starting to believe in this wild theory. “What an incredible turn of events here since last week… I don’t know what the deal is with the even-year thing, but maybe it’s real. I’m so blessed.” Logano said this to NBC Sports.

Last time around, when Logano won in the fall race at this mile-and-a-half track, he was the aggressor and chased down Ross Chastain for the win. However, this time he was on the defensive with a fuel-mileage racing tactic that was well executed by his entire team. “Just an incredible day; the whole team did the fuel mileage stuff; it’s not just the engine or the engineers, the drivers, the spotter; it takes all of us to be able to do it. So a total team win. We may not have been the fastest car today, but we were a solid top 5 car and be able to maximize at the end,” he added.

Meanwhile, the JGR driver Christopher Bell was crestfallen to have not been able to make it past the finish line first. Although he has a good cushion of points going into the next two races, he is wary about the fact that things could go sideways.

All it takes is one bad race

At this point of the season where the margins are fine, Christopher Bell was eager to secure his championship 4 spot with a win. The #20 JGR team brought a rocket ship that was worthy of winning the race. Having finished second in the first stage and securing the win for the stage 2 run, Bell looked destined to win the race.

The turning point of the race came when the team decided to opt for a fresh set of Goodyear tires around 40 laps to go in the race. They knew that the likes of Logano and Denny Hamlin were low on fuel and on older tires, and with the raw speed on the #20 Toyota Camry, they would be able to close the gap on them. And he nearly did it but was shy of a lap or two as Logano activated the afterburners on his #22 Ford Mustang and took the win.

Dejected by the outcome of the race, Christopher Bell said in an interview, “I don’t know. I don’t know, and I don’t think I’ve come to terms yet, so I don’t know. Just a bummer. You know, this track means nothing for next week. Fortunately, we were able to go and win in Homestead, but nothing’s guaranteed… I think the points look pretty good, which is a positive, but you’re never safe in this deal. We needed to win today, and unfortunately, we didn’t. We’ll go on to that.”

Meanwhile, a lot of big guns misfired today or had trouble. Denny Hamlin was nowhere near his best; Kyle Larson ran into troubles of his own on the pit road, whereas Ryan Blaney just couldn’t make any difference starting from the rear. So, the Homestead race is going to see a lot of action and desperation for sure.