The second race in the 2024 Playoffs will commence on the difficult turns of Watkins Glen on September 15th, 2024. The Blue Oval is hot off a win at Atlanta Motor Speedway that catapulted Joey Logano’s No. 22 NASCAR Ford Mustang Dark Horse into the Round of 12, but the remaining five still have some work to do if they want to make it alongside him. Watkins Glen also marks the second-to-last race of the Xfinity Series regular season, so there’s a lot to keep an eye on at the Glen this weekend.
Logano’s win at Atlanta was the 34th of his Cup Series career and his 32nd with Ford, ranking him fourth on the all-time Ford win list. He only tails Ned Jarrett (43), Bill Elliott (40) and Mark Martin (35). His win also marked the 98th with Ford for Team Penske, and he could add another notch to The Blue Oval’s belt this weekend at the Glen. He has several consecutive top-10 finishes and was the last Ford driver to win at the track back in 2015.
“Watkins Glen isn’t the typical Watkins Glen that we’ve seen in the past,” Logano said. “They’ve changed some things to the track. They’ve added rumble strips off of turn one that prevents us from dropping way outside of the curb. They’ve changed the curbing to the bus stop itself to where you won’t be launching them into the corner as much, and then they also added rumble strips on the exit of the carousel to keep us from dropping way out there, so the track will race differently.”
Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Mustang, is also looking forward to the road course race, but he also admits there are some unknowns due to the track’s reconfiguration.
“I don’t know what to expect,” he said. “We have some idea from the tire test that went on there and what the fall off is gonna be. I think there’s gonna be a lot of fall off, which is good… The changes to the track are not crazy.”
Harrison Burton, meanwhile, said he’s a little anxious about taking on Watkins Glen, but he’s not letting himself get as nervous as he could.
“It’s probably the road course I have the most laps on. As you come up through the ranks you get a lot of laps at a lot of different tracks and similar racetracks, but you go to all these road courses and even in my Cup career my first race at Sonoma was in a Cup car,” he said. “It’s really kind of nice to go somewhere I have a lot of laps at.”
In the Xfinity Series, NASCAR Ford drivers Riley Herbst and Cole Custer have already clinched Playoff slots, but Ryan Sieg is 44 points out. If he wins this weekend, though, it’ll be an automatic pass into the postseason fight.
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