Photo – Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images

Last year, Joey Logano did all he could at Talladega Superspeedway to help Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski advance to the Chase’s Round of 8.

Then again, last year Logano was in a position to do so, given that he had won the first two races in the Round of 12. And with his help, Keselowski advanced to the penultimate round with a fourth-place finish.

But in the Hellman’s 500 on Sunday, both Logano and Keselowski will be fighting for their Chase lives. Heading into the Round of 12 cutoff race, Logano is tied for eighth, the final transfer position. After wrecking out of last Sunday’s Kansas race in 38th place, Keselowski is 11th in the Chase standings, seven points behind Logano and Austin Dillon.

Accordingly, each driver will have his own agenda on Sunday.

“Brad was in a do-or-die situation and I was locked in, so our main goal was to get Brad through,” Logano said of last year’s Talladega race, which Logano won to sweep the round. “That was our goal. There was a lot of talk about how we help each other and how we can put him in position to make the moves at the end of the race. I gave him my commitment that I was going be there for him.

“I was going push him along. I was going do everything that I knew how to do to help him win. That situation 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 going to help each other as much as we can, but we both kind of have to win.’

“It’s a little bit different than that race, but at the same time we’re good teammates. We’re going to race each other and we’re going help each other like we do every single week.”

But they won’t be helping each other at the expense of their own Chase chances.