With his second chance at the Cup title, Joey Logano is ready to attack Las Vegas

After learning of an inspection issue with Alex Bowman’s car at the Charlotte Roval on Sunday night, Joey Logano had a question.

“Would we be there?”

The answer was “yes” after NASCAR disqualified Bowman because his car did not meet the minimum weight requirement after the race.

This penalty revived Logano’s hopes of winning a third Cup title and becoming only the tenth driver in series history to win three or more Cup championships.

So how does Logano handle his second chance at a drivers’ title?

“We would have done the same thing if we had done it differently,” Logano told reporters Tuesday. “You go out there and attack.”

Logano is the last of the title contenders to reach the round of 8. He is 11 points below the cut line. William Byron holds the final transfer spot before Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on NBC). Logano joins his Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney in the round.

It’s easy to view Logano as an outsider. The top seven drivers from the regular season (before points were reset) are all in the Round of 8. Logano joins them after finishing 15th in the regular season.

But Logano won the playoff opener in Atlanta and scored the third-most points at the Charlotte Roval last weekend.

“I feel like we’ve gotten steadily better over the course of the season and improved to where we are now,” Logano said. “I am confident in the speed we have in our car.

“Kansas, we were very fast and almost won the first stage there. We need to clear up a few issues on the execution side. Talladega is Talladega. We were involved in the big accident there, but the speed we had on the Roval this weekend seemed pretty solid to me as we are a 4th championship race team.

“The statistics may not look like it. From the outside it may look like we are underdogs, but internally in our race team we are very confident that we can survive this and make it to Championship 4.

“We have seen in the past that anything can happen in Phoenix (in the title race). The goal at the moment is to look at the next three races and see how we can maximize that. We can show the way forward. We’re only 11 out, so it’s not a lot of points by any means. It can happen very quickly, so one race after another. At the moment the focus is on Vegas and we will try to make the most of the day there.”

When asked if it was motivating to get this second chance at the title, Logano said: “No. I mean, we are a motivated racing team in every respect. The part I was most proud of after the Roval was that in a situation where we really needed to show our stuff, we showed up with our backs to the wall and qualified well, we had the ( Third) most points scored. The goal was to collect a lot of points. We missed that by a point.”

As Logano focuses on this weekend’s race in Las Vegas, he understands what Bowman is feeling.

“That’s what I experienced,” said Logano, whose 2017 win at Richmond didn’t count toward playoff qualification after his car failed post-race inspection and then didn’t make the playoffs that year.

“If you’ve done these things long enough, as a driver you find yourself in scenarios like this and it’s not easy on any level. First, you have to answer questions from (the media). The impact it has on your race team. Nothing good comes of it and it’s frustrating to boot.”