Around NASCAR: Logano-Kenseth Dust-Up Adding Much-Needed Drama to Chase

Finally, a couple of the boys had at it toward the end of last Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway.

It was long overdue and exactly what this otherwise uninspiring 2015 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup needed.

No matter what side you come down on in the dust-up between race winner Joey Logano and Matt Kenseth, the driver of the car that Logano wrecked to win, it at least has injected some drama and energy into the proceedings. It not only spiced up the end of what was unfortunately an all-too-predictably boring Kansas race, but it also makes everything more interesting going forward.

Logano had already won the first race of the Contender Round to secure his advancement into the next round of NASCAR’s playoffs. Kenseth, who had a bad first race in the Contender Round and thus needed the win a whole lot more, repeatedly tried to block Logano, who had the faster car, in the final laps. Logano eventually had enough and moved Kenseth out of the way.

Logano told reporters afterward that it was nothing but “hard racing.” Kenseth, naturally, saw it differently and said, “You make decisions every day. You make decisions behind the wheel. To me, strategically, that doesn’t’ seem like such a great decision for him. But it’s the one he made and that’s how he wanted to win.”

Now the question is: Did Logano help or hurt his own championship chances with the calculated move?

On one side of the equation, he obviously helped himself by possibly removing Kenseth, winner of a series-high five races this season, as a fellow title contender. Unless Kenseth can win this Sunday at Talladega, where he has gone to Victory Lane only once in 31 career starts, he’s done.

But on the flip side, Logano might very well have hurt his own chances if Kenseth, once eliminated, decides turnabout is fair play and wrecks Logano during one of the races in the Eliminator 8 round or even in the winner-take-all championship race in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, should Logano make it that far.

Either way, it adds drama, excitement and uncertainty to a Chase that badly needed all of the above.

Biff has 'own plan'

Greg Biffle is 46 years old and hasn’t been running very competitively for the last two years, even though he did sneak into the Chase briefly last season (he finished 14th in the points standings after being one of the first four drivers eliminated in the opening round).

He’s older than both Jeff Gordon, 44, and Tony Stewart, 45, both of whom have already announced their retirement plans. Gordon will make the transition from driver’s seat to broadcast booth with Fox Sports beginning next season while Stewart recently announced he will cease driving in the Sprint Cup Series after the 2016 season.

Biffle, on the other hand, told Jared Turner of FoxSports.com that the announcements by Gordon and Stewart have no impact on when he’ll retire and added that he intends to remain at Roush Fenway Racing at least through the end of his current contract, which runs through the 2017 season.

“I’ve got my own plan,” Biffle said, telling Turner that he still believes that he can help struggling Roush Fenway return to its former glory and contend for championships.

Good luck with that, Biff. RFR is lagging so far behind the top teams in Sprint Cup now that it is more likely to be lapped a couple more times before he hangs it up rather than the other way around.

Back for more

While Kyle Busch’s comeback from serious leg and ankle injuries suffered in the season-opening XFINITY Series race at Daytona rates as one of the top stories in NASCAR this season, it’s pretty amazing what his older brother, Kurt, has been able to pull off, as well.

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Kurt Busch, remember, was suspended by NASCAR for the first three races this season because of alleged domestic abuse. Although he was reinstated after prosecutors in Delaware eventually dropped criminal charges, missing those first three races still put Busch in a hole and threw his racing future temporarily into doubt.

Once he returned to the track, Busch drove like a man possessed. He won the pole in two of his first four races back and went on to register two race wins, 10 top-five finishes and 17 top-10 finishes in his first 28 starts. NBC Sports' Jerry Bonkowski reported it will be announced Wednesday that he is signing a contract extension with Stewart-Haas Racing.

For a guy who almost ran himself out of the sport a few years ago because of his own volatile temper, it was a comeback story at least rivaling his younger brother’s, as both of the Busch bros raced their way into the Chase against long odds.

Really? That's all?

Kurt Busch heads to this Sunday's Chase elimination race at 'Dega, by the way, sitting in what appears to be a solid third in this round's standings. But he expressed genuine surprise and more than a little angst when it was revealed to him by a reporter that despite being in third, he's only 13 points ahead of the cutoff line for the final transfer spot into the next round of the Chase.

"Really? Only plus-13? That is unbelievable," Busch said after finishing sixth at Kansas. "I would have hoped we could be 25. That's how tight it is. This competition, you can't get a spot on anybody and you can't give up a spot. Plus-13 is not very exciting...wow, you kind of deflated my bubble there. I thought a fifth [at Charlotte] and a sixth [at Kansas] was pretty good in this round. It is not."

Actually, it is. But as his brother Kyle found out in last year's Chase, you can't follow it up with a disaster at Talladega or it won't mean a thing.

On the loose in the Everglades

Defending Sprint Cup champion Kevin Harvick is used to battling some feisty competitors on the track and always seems to do so without the slightest hesitation.

But when he took to the Florida Everglades this week in a twin-engine, 800-horsepower airboat, it seemed he encountered some potential foes who actually required him to keep his distance. The Homestead-Miami Speedway Twitter account documented his day.

This and that

Kenseth isn’t the only driver in serious trouble heading into the uncertainty that is Talladega this weekend. Dale Earnhardt Jr. also needs to win to stay alive in the Chase after suffering a poor finish at Kansas that was largely the result of problems in the pits, something that also hampered Harvick. The good news for Earnhardt Jr. is that he won at ‘Dega in the spring.

Kyle Busch (six points behind eighth-place driver Martin Truex Jr.) and Ryan Newman (eight behind Truex) need good finishes at ‘Dega to advance but don’t necessarily need to win. By comparison, Earnhardt Jr. is 31 points out of eighth, the last transfer spot, and Kenseth is 35 out.

Kasey Kahne, who has struggled mightily this season as driver of the No. 5 Chevy for Hendrick Motorsports, commented on Twitter that he lacked sleep in the five days before the Kansas race, thanks to the birth of his son Tanner. Maybe the first-time dad is onto something, though. He went on to finish fourth in the race, matching his best two finishes of the season, both of which came way back in the spring (Mar. 15 at Phoenix and May 31 at Dover).

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand.

Joe Menzer has written six books, including two about NASCAR, and now writes about it and other sports for Bleacher Report as well as assisting in coverage of NASCAR for FoxSports.com as a Digital Content Producer. Follow him on Twitter @OneMenz.