Last weekend’s Quaker State 400 at Atlanta’s EchoPark Speedway was a straight-up demolition derby, with a 23-car wreck leaving the track looking like a junkyard. Denny Hamlin, caught in the chaos, wasn’t thrilled with NASCAR’s scoring after the crash. On his Actions Detrimental podcast, he vented about being told he could pass cars he was already ahead of when the wreck happened, only to learn they were scored ahead of him.

“So if there is a multi-car accident where there’s more cars wrecked than tow trucks, the order in which you get towed will definitely matter. So I would make friends with the tow truck people,” Hamin had predicted this about the DVP rule well before the Atlanta carnage. Well, it is indeed hard to find 23 tow trucks for 23 cars, which in turn could affect a team’s ability to rework and get back on the racetrack.

In Hamlin’s case, he was also baffled by how NASCAR scored him while he was in the crash on Lap 69 of Stage 2. This forced his team to get a two hours worth of repair and gain those lost positions. However, Joey Logano presented a rather different perspective about the DVP ruling, and he didn’t have any complaints like Hamlin.

In the press conference ahead of the Chicago race, Logano shared his take on DVP, “I didn’t get really experience the full thing as we were just parked on pit road and it was done with the radiator knocked out of it and it’s not on the list. It’s kind of wild to see that many cars wiped out there. But yeah, part of the game, I guess it went fairly smooth. I watched on TV to see that and actually go into effect and see a car stuck and they plugged it in and drove off. That was cool. That’s a start. I wasn’t in the middle of any DVP nor were any of our cars sincerely to speak up to know he got any little details and things like that, but it seems like the rules are clear.”

Atlanta’s 23-car pile-up left Logano’s car toast, with a busted radiator ending his day early. Watching from the sidelines, he found the garage scene, cars lined up like a parking lot, almost comical. His “part of the game” shrug nods to last year’s DVP controversy, when Ryan Blaney got sidelined at Watkins Glen over a fixable steering arm issue. Not to forget the Talladega controversy, where the biggest big one saw Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe get special treatment on being towed to the pit area and not the garage.

NASCAR’s new rules, giving teams more time to repair, aimed to fix that, and Logano saw it play out smoothly, with cars getting patched up and back on track. But, Hamlin seems to have found out a loophole which he feels might hamper a team’s chance to gain something from the race, especially in a multi-car crash. We have seen NASCAR make changes to the DVP policy before the start of the 2025 season, and they might have some rough edges that they might clean up during this offseason.

Logano’s plan to tackle SVG in Chicago

Joey Logano’s gearing up for the Chicago Street Course, but he knows he’s got a mountain to climb against road-course king Shane van Gisbergen. The Kiwi dominated Mexico City’s street race on June 15, leading from pole to a 16-second win, and nabbed a sixth at COTA earlier this year. Logano, on the other hand, has struggled on road courses, with just one top-10 in his last six tries, a ninth at the Charlotte Roval.

His Mexico City run was rough, starting ninth but fading to 21st, and COTA saw him drop from 23rd to 24th. Facing van Gisbergen’s mastery, Logano’s not sugarcoating the challenge. In a Chicago press conference, he laid out his game plan: push past his comfort zone. He acknowledged van Gisbergen’s edge, noting the Kiwi’s road-course skills make everyone else play catch-up.

With NASCAR’s Next Gen cars demanding raw aggression over finesse, Logano knows he can’t coast. “It’s easy to say that but you gotta figure out how to go fast and last I checked with this car, there’s no going fast in your comfort zone. We’re not a road racer, there’s one out there, that really is. All of us are playing catch-up,” he admitted, emphasizing the need to lean into risky moves to match van Gisbergen’s pace. The Chicago Street Course, with its tight turns and concrete walls, will test that strategy, especially after van Gisbergen’s Mexico rout.

Logano’s honesty about his road-course struggles shows his champ’s mindset: own the weakness, and try to work on it. He’s banking on discomfort to close the gap, knowing SVG is not just another driver but a road-course specialist who’s rewriting the playbook.