Logano advances to NASCAR finale
Wins Sunday to make championship race
MARTINSVILLE, Va. – With a berth in the championship round on the line, Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr. were willing to do whatever it took in the final laps of the First Data 500 Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.
After trading the lead back and forth in the last 10 laps, Logano put the bumper to Truex’s No. 78 Toyota and turned him sideways as the cars approached the finish line. Logano’s No. 22 Ford also wiggled, but he gathered it back in time to tip a hard-charging Denny Hamlin for the checkered flag.
“We were racing hard,” Logano said amid a mixture of hearty boos and cheers from the fans as he climbed out of his car. “You just have to expect at Martinsville at the end of the race that there’s going to be some bumping and grinding. That’s grass-roots racing right there. That’s what the fans here come to see.
“This is by far the biggest win of the year, and now we’re going to race for a championship in Miami!”
With his 20th career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory and first at Martinsville, Logano became the first playoff driver in the Round of 8 to ensure himself the chance of racing for a championship in three weeks at HomesteadMiami Speedway.
As for Truex, the reigning series champion was left fuming on pit road and vowed that the Team Penske driver would not win the championship.
“They won the battle, but he didn’t win the damn war,” said a furious Truex. “I’m just not going to let him win (the championship). I’m going to win it.”
Truex, who hung on for third, called Logano’s move a cheap shot.
“I was next to him for six laps. I never knocked him out of the way. We were going to race hard for it in my book. I cleared him fair and square. We weren’t even banging doors for me to pass him. He just drove into the back of me and knocked me out of the way. That’s short-track racing, but what goes around comes around.”
Truex’s crew chief, Cole Pearn, was just as angry as his driver, and he didn’t mince words.
“I’m happy I don’t have a baseball bat or a jackhammer right now,” a shaking Pearn said on camera to NBC Sports after the race.
But Logano’s team owner, Roger Penske, wasn’t buying what Truex, Pearn and the Furniture Row Racing team were selling, especially the reference to the cheap shot.
“(Truex) should know better than that,” Penske said. “That was as clean a shot as you can have in a race like this. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a comment that I don’t think we deserve. From my perspective, Joey drove a great race. Our team was consistently tops on pit road and he led the most laps. I can’t say enough for Joey’s performance today.”
Denny Hamlin, a five-time Martinsville victor who has gone winless this season, said the only thing he was hoping for at the end was for Logano and Truex to “crash harder.”
When asked about the finish, Hamlin said he could see it coming.
“I think (Logano) knew he couldn’t win from the outside so that was his only shot. You could see it coming. I think everybody could see it coming.
“We’ve had some great finishes, and they all revolve around short tracks. You take aerodynamics out of the way and get back to short tracks, you could have racing like this every week.”
Kyle Busch, the top seed entering the third round, finished fourth, followed by Penske driver Brad Keselowski. Among the other Round of 8 drivers, Kurt Busch finished sixth, Chase Elliott seventh, Kevin Harvick 10th, Aric Almirola 11th and Clint Bowyer 21st.
Bowyer was knocked out of contention on lap 457 when he was sent into a spin following a side-by-side battle between Jimmie Johnson and Daniel Suarez, who were racing directly behind him.
Kyle Busch, Truex and Harvick (in that order) maintained their grip at the top of the standings with two races remaining in the third round and three slots left in the final four. The series next heads to Texas Motor Speedway and then ISM Raceway in Phoenix, where it won’t get any easier for the remaining Round of 8 participants.
Busch won at Texas for third time in his career this spring after leading a race-high 116 laps and holding off Harvick at the finish line. Three races earlier at Phoenix, Harvick prevailed to extend his track record to nine victories. Coming in second in the desert — Busch.