Logano Continues Summer Surge With Richmond Triumph

Joey Logano celebrates in victory lane Saturday night at Richmond Raceway. (John Harrelson/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

By Thomas Hughes, SWN Staff Writer

RICHMOND, Va. (Aug. 16, 2026) — Sports are often decided by the minutiae. In NASCAR, where drivers race inches apart at high speeds, those minuscule moments can be the difference between victory and defeat.

One of those flashes ended up being the difference in Saturday night’s Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway, where three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano bested Chase Briscoe late to capture his second win of the season and continue his recent meteoric rise up the standings.

Perhaps the defining moment of the race at the three-quarter-mile short track wasn’t an on-track pass or a gutsy move — though that’s up for interpretation.

The turning point came entering pit lane on lap 364, when Team Penske’s Logano and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Briscoe were battling for the lead. Logano snatched the advantage, prompting Briscoe’s crew chief James Small to motion for the No. 19 to pit.

En route to doing so, Briscoe locked his tires up, and during the subsequent pit sequence Logano emerged just ahead. Logano ultimately went on to take the checkered flag first by .392 seconds for his second victory in the past four races.

“We’re pretty strong right now,” the 36-year old Logano said in victory lane. “It’s awesome to see the speed in the [No.] 22 again. Gosh, it was a great car, and we’ve had a great car here in the last five races, but weren’t able to capitalize on the win. So close, but sweet redemption today.”

It marked the 39th career Cup Series victory overall for Logano and his third at Richmond, continuing a summer surge that has seen Logano blast from 20th in the standings and well outside the Chase cut line to ninth in points after Saturday night and looking like a sudden threat for a fourth Cup championship.

“This team has gone through moments like this before,” Logano said. “This one was probably more extreme than anyone we've been through, but we've been able to stick together, which is good. But also, like when you do get speed, we were able to show back up, right? Sometimes, you can kind of lose a little bit of fire, right?

“… If you just run 20th over and over again, that that extra effort can go either way, right? You're either going to fight harder and try to make it up, or you're going to accept it and go, ‘Well, we're just a 20^th-place team. That's where we're going to be this year.’ We were in that spot where we can go either way, right? We were there, and this team fought harder and kept trying to figure it out.”

If it felt like Logano came out of nowhere to snag the victory, you wouldn’t be alone in that summation. Briscoe thought the same way afterward.

“Typical late-summer Joey Logano — just coming out of nowhere on you,” Briscoe said on pit road after the race’s conclusion.

In the early stages of the race, Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney paced the field from the pole alongside Briscoe. Blaney’s car eventually faded, dropping to fifth before falling to 13th by the checkered flag, while Briscoe remained in contention at the front.

The lead changed hands between Briscoe and Logano throughout the evening, part of a race-record 29 lead changes, but their final exchange came during the pit sequence with 37 laps left.

Despite the second-place effort, Briscoe, who paced the field for a race-high 171 laps, didn’t view his race as a failure.

“This is my worst racetrack, for sure,” he said to Steering Wheel Nation following the race. “From that standpoint, it’s definitely a success. If you would have told me I could have ran this well going into today, I would have gladly taken it.”

The runner-up finish still stung, but it represented a significant step forward at a track that had historically given Briscoe fits.

“It doesn’t make not winning hurt any less, but certainly a big improvement from what I’ve been in the past,” he said. “… I feel like we’re more than capable of winning the championship. … [We] have been extremely strong of the course of this stretch.” 

Briscoe entered Saturday with a 16.3 average finish in nine Richmond starts, having finished inside the top 20 six times, but never inside the top 10. Saturday brought his first top five, top 10, and laps led at the track.

Briscoe also secured his spot in the 10-race Chase, which begins Sept. 6 at Darlington Raceway. He joins series leader Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Ty Gibbs, Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, and Christopher Bell as one of the seven drivers already locked in.

On the cut line, Team Penske’s Austin Cindric occupies the penultimate spot in the standings two races ahead of the Chase, sitting seven points above Trackhouse Racing’s Shane van Gisbergen after a strong third-place effort Saturday that netted him 48 total points.

“I felt like we had a shot to win tonight, and we didn’t,” Cindric said. “[But] that’s the stuff that does make you at least wake up, like you’re working on the right stuff. … It’s definitely a big jump from where we’ve been probably the last couple of months.”

Logano, Briscoe and Cindric had all preserved their pit strategy for the race’s closing stages, while 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick and JGR’s Christopher Bell pitted earlier. When the decisive sequence arrived, Logano’s No. 22 was the one that executed.

Beyond the top three, JGR’s Hamlin finished fourth, pocketing 46 points and extending his championship lead to 111 over Blaney. The polesitter finished a nondescript 13th.

Hendrick Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson finished fifth and sixth, with both looking to turn the tide from recent slumps.

Elliott jumped up a spot in the standings to fifth, while Larson halted a five-race stretch that saw four finishes of 30th or worse before jetting out of Richmond to race – and win – the Knoxville Nationals in a sprint car just hours after the conclusion of the Cup event.

Bell, Wood Brothers Racing’s Josh Berry, and Hendrick’s William Byron and Alex Bowman rounded out the top-10, with Reddick just outside in 11th place.

Van Gisbergen finished 14th and now holds the final spot in the Chase, with a 50-point gap to RFK Racing’s Ryan Preece and a 63-point advantage over Trackhouse’s Ross Chastain. 

“You can always be better,” van Gisbergen said. “I could have driven better, positioned myself better off of a few cars.”

Just two races remain before the 16-driver Chase field is finalized for the 10-race run to determine the season champion.

The Cup Series next travels to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where Berry, Larson and Briscoe are the three best drivers by average finishing position since 2023 with 2.5, 4.7 and 7.3 averages, respectively.

The Dollar Tree 301 is set for Sunday, Aug. 23; broadcast coverage airs starting at 3 p.m. ET on USA, HBO Max, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.