Last week, Joey Logano was screaming on his radio and walked home with a DQ. Now, he’s in Victory Lane at Texas! Momentum in NASCAR can change on a dime, and that is exactly what has happened for Logano today.

The first 10 races of this season were rough for Joey Logano. He had a single top-10 and no top-five finishes. Add on that disqualification from Talladega, and this was a horrid season.

Logano is going home with the win today. This puts him in the playoffs, too. Will he make another deep run after a poor start to the season? P27 at the green flag to P1 at the checkered.

This race was sloppy, and it was hard to pass. But we can’t ignore that a bulk of the top-10 came from the back of the pack to finish in the front. Joey Logano wasn’t the only hard charger in the race.

Ross Chastain was the runner-up; he started P31. Ryan Blaney started P24 and moved up to P3. Kyle Larson was the only driver in the top-10 to start the race to finish in the top-10. He started today at Texas P4 and finished there in the end.

Should Blaney have been able to pass Larson in Stage 2 of this race? Yeah, that would have been nice. Still, given the lack of action we have seen recently, 12 cautions and a pass like Logano made on Michael McDowell for the lead feels like a breath of fresh air.

Joey Logano flips the script in one week

Coming into this race, Joey Logano was 11th in points. He had led 284 laps on the season and even earned two stage wins. The finishes were just falling out of his hands week in and out. From on-track incidents to bad cars, driver mistakes to a DQ post-race.

Now he has a win, that other stuff doesn’t matter anymore. Logano is going to go to the playoffs this season, and that is always dangerous or the field. All it takes is a strong performance at Gateway or New Hampshire. If he gets to Las Vegas in the Round of 8, his chances of winning and making it to Phoenix go up exponentially.

Team Penske was on it today at Texas. They had two of the best cars at the end of the race. Austin Cindric led 60 laps. Josh Berry led 41 laps before wrecking his Wood Brothers No. 21 car from the lead.

Joey Logano is going to be just fine. Paul Wolfe and this group are getting things together now. It would be disappointing to see them slip back to their old ways and pick up more mediocre finishes. The three-time champ needs to keep racing like a three-time champ.