Will Joey Logano move onto the Round of 8?

The crew chief of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford and driver Joey Logano stayed on Monday for the Goodyear tire test at Kansas Speedway following the Hollywood Casino 400.

Team Penske was one of four squads participating in the one-day test, along with the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports crew, the No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing team and Erik Jones with the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing squad.

“I really commend NASCAR and Goodyear for doing a tire test on the Monday following. I think track conditions--that’s as realistic as you’re going to make it,” Gordon said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “It was great, because we maintained the temperature we had from Sunday. We also maintained the wind we had from Sunday. It was quite blustery. That put some challenges into the testing.

“I thought it was a good test. It was a good chance to work on the ’17 package with Goodyear and doing some good things to quantify the things that will help them with the development that they’ve got going on for next year and also give us the opportunity to see what we thought we’d see.”

The best way I know how to race those places — and Joey as well — is to do what we’ve always done and race ourselves.

Todd Gordon, crew chief for Joey Logano

Goodyear used the tires codes from Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 as the control tire to set a baseline for Monday’s test. Different combinations of tires were incorporated into the exercise so Goodyear could arrive at the best overall selection for 2017.

Gordon also had a sneak peek of the new lower downforce set up on the cars — with the shorter, wider (2 3/8 inches x 61 inches) spoiler and smaller splitter, which has been reduced by three inches on the outboard regions.

“They’re a little less stuck in the race track,” Gordon said. “I think this was a good chance for us to see where that was. I don’t feel we’ve changed the balance a ton on these race cars. We’ve taken some performance away from the cars with less downforce, but we really haven’t changed the inherent balance of the car a ton.

“That was good to see. NASCAR worked pretty hard when they cut the splitter shorter on the sides to try and take away some of the front downforce away and then they cut the spoiler off the back. We raced that package a couple of places but they tweaked on the rear spoiler — they made if shorter and wider which I think kind of made some more balance for it, as far as sideforce goes. It’s similar downforce-wise, but it makes a little more rear sideforce so there’s more stability in the car.”

No cushion heading to Talladega

With this weekend being the elimination race for the Round of Eight, Gordon was ready to return to North Carolina and prepare for this weekend’s race at Talladega Superspeedway. The No. 22 team is the defending winner of the event.

Last year, Logano swept all three races in the second round of the Chase. After finishing 36th at Charlotte in the first race of this round, the No. 22 crew fought their way back to eighth in the standing following a third-place finish last week at Kansas. Still, Logano is tied in points with Austin Dillon. With a third-place finish at Kansas to his credit, Logano currently holds the tiebreaker over Dillon, but only Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick are locked into the Round of 8, thanks to their Round of 12 victories at Charlotte and Kansas, respectively.

“We felt like we needed to go to Kansas and execute,” Gordon said. “We didn’t necessarily feel we needed to win, but we needed to come out with a solid top-five finish as we knew we could perform at Kansas — and we did that. Now we just need to go to Talladega and race.

“The best way I know how to race those places — and Joey as well — is to do what we’ve always done and race ourselves. Not try and lay back. Not try and do something different. We’re best at doing the things that we know how to and what comes naturally to us.

"We’re going to go to Talladega and race forward and try to race in front of everything all day, execute the best we can and see where that takes us. I think we have a good shot of transferring on. I just think we need to do the things we know how to do.”