Joey Logano, Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick have all advanced to the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Each driver of the quartet has a chance to win the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series title by out finishing the other three in next Sunday’s Ford 400.
The four drivers have combined to win 22 of the season’s 35 races. Busch, Harvick and Truex Jr. are all former champions while Logano is shooting for his first crown.
Logano made an early exit from Sunday’s Can-Am 500 at ISM Raceway when he cut a tire and crashed out of the race early. But his Martinsville win to start the Round of 8 earned his opportunity to run for the title.
“We’d be out,” Logano said without the win. “You can’t afford to have that happen in this Round of 8. We won Martinsville and that’s the reason why we’re gonna race at Miami. It is what it is. We’ll move on from this. There’s not much we can do about a tire going flat. It is what it is. We’ll just go to Miami and race for a championship.”
Harvick had a difficult path to make it back to the Championship 4 after his L1 Texas penalty took last week’s win away as an automatic berth. He had to come back from a flat tire early in Sunday’s race to finish fifth and earn his spot in Miami.
“I think we have a chance every time we show up,” Harvick said. “Our guys are doing a great job obviously to accomplish everything we did this weekend was quite the feat without your crew chief and car chief, but (crew chief) Tony Gibson and Nick did a great job filling in and everybody kept their head about them and we were competitive all weekend.”
Busch’s eighth win of the season on Sunday propels the Joe Gibbs Racing driver to Homestead and he believes with a great deal of momentum.
“I’d like to think it gives us a lot, but I don’t know – talk is cheap,” Busch said after his win.
“We’ve got to be able to go out there and perform and just do what we need to do. Being able to do what we did here today was certainly beneficial. I didn’t think we were the best car, but we survived and we did what we needed to do today. It’s just about getting to next week and once we were locked in, it was ‘all bets are off and it’s time to go.’”
Truex Jr., who will be Busch’s teammate next year at JGR when Furniture Row Racing ceases operation at season’s end, believes he has an excellent opportunity to be the first Cup Series back-to-back championship since Jimmie Johnson nearly a decade ago.
“We just wanted a chance,” Truex Jr. said. “Getting to Homestead was the goal all year and we achieved it. Now we think we have as good as shot as any to battle it out with these guys and get us another championship. Why not?”
