Nobody needed a bigger bounce-back weekend at Martinsville Speedway than Team Penske's Joey Logano, who finished several laps off the lead lap at Darlington Raceway on pure pace and could only muster up a 33rd place finish.
That result, which was his fifth consecutive finish of 15th or lower, dropped him into a tie for the 16th and final spot above the playoff cut line.
He owned the tiebreaker over Spire Motorsports' Michael McDowell, due to the fact that his season-best finish of third at Daytona International Speedway is better than McDowell's top result of fifth at Circuit of the Americas (COTA).
Joey Logano bounces back at Martinsville
Logano collected 12 stage points and finished Sunday's 400-lap Cook Out 400 around the four-turn, 0.526-mile (0.847-kilometer) Ridgeway, Virginia oval in third place, and that result vaulted him up to 12th place in the point standings, importantly with a 27-point cushion over the cut line.
McDowell remains 17th, and he's now nine points behind teammate Daniel Suarez for 16th. For the first time this season, there were no changes to the provisional 16-driver playoff field after Sunday's race.
Only the top 16 drivers in points are set to qualify for this year's playoffs; there is no more "win and in", and the playoffs are set to consist of only a single 10-race round, rather than three three-race rounds and a winner-take-all Championship 4 finale.
Having said that, the four winners so far this season are the four drivers who find themselves in the top four in the point standings through seven races.
The Cup Series has off for Easter weekend and is scheduled to return to action at Bristol Motor Speedway with the Food City 500 on Sunday, April 12. Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson and Joe Gibbs Racing's Christopher Bell won at Bristol a year ago, and neither one has won yet this year.
Fox Sports 1 is set to provide live coverage starting at 3:00 p.m. ET, so start a free trial of FuboTV and don't miss it!