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Joey Logano: 'If I'm on defense, we're not going to win'

Joey Logano is currently 8th in the points standings. (Getty)
Joey Logano is currently 8th in the points standings. (Getty)

Joey Logano can advance to the third round of the Chase as long as he finishes ahead of Austin Dillon and maintains his point advantages on Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Chase Elliott.

But he’s not looking at Sunday’s Talladega race as an event where he will pay more attention to defending against those four drivers than he is about winning the race himself and automatically advancing to the third round.

“I don’t really think about how people are trying to knock me out, I think about how I’m gonna knock other people out,” Logano said Friday. “That’s my attitude. If I’m on defense, we’re not gonna win. We better stay on offense … We’re gonna go out there and race hard because that’s what we know how to do when we come to speedways. Some guys can do it good the other way but, for us, we’re gonna go out there and race hard and try to stay up front, try to keep making our car better for the end of the race and be there at the end.”

Logano won this race in 2015 over Dale Earnhardt Jr. when he was ahead of Junior when the caution lights came on after the race’s final restart. The win prevented Junior from advancing into the third round of the Chase and gave Logano a sweep of the second round. He won at Charlotte and Kansas the previous two weeks.

This year, Logano is tied for eighth in the points standings with Dillon, though Logano has the tiebreaker thanks to his finish at Kansas. Only eight drivers move on to the third round, so Logano could finish second Sunday and fail to advance if he doesn’t pass any of the top seven drivers and either of the aforementioned four drivers in the first paragraph win the race.

That scenario is probably why Logano is looking to be aggressive. Though he said he’ll be working with his teammate Keselowski if it’s prudent throughout the race. Logano helped push Keselowski to a win at Talladega in 2014 as Logano was set to advance in the Chase thanks to a win at Kansas.

“That situation [like 2014] will happen throughout a lot of other teams this week, but it’s something Brad and I need to have an understanding that, ‘Hey, yeah, we’re gonna help each other as much as we can, but we both kind of have to win,'” Logano said. “It’s a little bit different than that race, but at the same time we’re good teammates. We’re gonna race each other and we’re gonna help each other like we do every single week.”

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!