If you're an aspiring driver learning how to excel on restarts, make sure you study the hell out of Joey Logano's win at Michigan on Sunday.
Logano led 138 of 200 laps thanks to his incredible restarts throughout the entire race. Yes, Logano had the track position on the restarts, but his acceleration relative to the rest of the field was impeccable.
It's hard to catch a driver when you don't get an opportunity to pass him and Logano didn't give anyone any opportunities. How did he do it? Well, he wasn't too keen on giving anyone any ideas after the race.
“I think we got lucky I guess," Logano said. "I don’t know. There is a lot of thought that goes into restarts with this race team, from every angle. It all kind of came together.”
Logano started first and didn't stray from the front of the field in the 62 laps he didn't lead. It's his first points win since Talladega in the fall of 2015, though he won the All-Star Race in May, beating teammate Brad Keselowski to the finish line.
Sunday's race was the first race for new tweaks to the rules. The cars ran smaller splitters on the front and shorter spoilers on the back with the goal of making the cars less aerodynamically sensitive and to give drivers more opportunities to pass in the corners.
The changes certainly helped make slower corner speeds. Drivers were entering the corners at over 200 MPH but were forced to slow down approximately 40 MPH before punching the accelerator to exit the corner. Restarts – behind Logano, at least – were exceptionally hairy as drivers figured out the limits to their machinery.
On seemingly every restart a driver or three would bobble in the corner and have to get out of the gas severely, forcing others to scramble two-and-three-wide for a way around. Most times resulted without an incident; others sparked crashes. Both Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson, among others, smacked the wall shortly after restarts after contact from other drivers.
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