Joey Logano has a good thing going at tracks that are new to NASCAR. Last year, he snatched the first-ever race on Bristol's temporary dirt surface. This year, he took the win in the showcase race inside the Los Angeles Coliseum. And today, in the first-ever Cup Series race at the Gateway flat intermediate oval that had disappeared from national-level racing entirely for a few years, he won at another new venue for the Cup Series.

It wasn't easy. Logano got to the lead in what should have been the closing laps after a small group of tires took two tires on the final stop, but a caution with less than 20 to go forced a restart that put Logano next to Kyle Busch. He lost the lead into turn 1, but a quick flat from Kevin Harvick forced an overtime finish and another late restart between Busch and Logano. This time, Logano got ahead of Busch in 1. That lasted all of half a turn before Busch switched his line mid-corner and got past out of turn 2. Then, with a lap and a half to go, Busch seemed to blow the entry into turn 3 and Logano slipped past again.

The win is Logano's second, formally locking him into a playoff field that is looking less and less like it might be complicated by a regular season with more than 16 winners. The even better news for Logano is that, as an uneven flat intermediate, Gateway is quite a lot like the Phoenix Raceway 1-miler that will decide this season's championship. Both he and his Penske teammates were ultra-competitive here and at Darlington, which is particularly encouraging for a program that has been a disappointment at bigger tracks since winning the season-opening Daytona 500.

Behind Logano, the story of the day was the strange driving of Ross Chastain. He's a two-time winner in 2022, but he got into both the No. 11 of Denny Hamlin and No. 9 of Chase Elliott early in the race. Hamlin crashed, but he got back out onto the track in what was then a much slower car to fall back to the No. 1 and repeatedly mess with Chastain in an odd retaliation. In any other series, it would be the sort of behavior that would get everyone involved seriously penalized. In a modern NASCAR, it was an oddity that should end with Chastain's apology on the FOX broadcast post-race.

As you may have noticed by now, NASCAR has almost no off-weekends. Their one this season is coming up later this month, but next weekend the series is back at Sonoma Raceway. It will mark the second road course race in a regular season where the series will visit four.