Joey Logano Wins at Talladega to Advance in The Chase

Joey Logano

Jonathan Ferrey/NASCAR via Getty Images

Joey Logano rallied from an early pit road gaffe to power his way to the front of the field and beat out Brian Scott on a final green-white-checkered over time finish to punch his ticket to the next round in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, while two of the strongest favorites fell victim to engine failures in the final race of the Round of 12.

Logano led the final 45 laps including two white-knuckle late-race starts and beat Scott by just over a car length for just his second win of the season and the 16^th of his career.

Denny Hamlin finished third to move ahead of Austin Dillon for the final transfer spot. Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch rounded out the rest of the top five.

Logano joins Jimmie Johnson, Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Hamlin, Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch into the Round of 8 starting next weekend at Martinsville.

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"] "What a special win," said Logano. "Winning here at Talladega is always special and it's a lot of fun. You never know you've got it. Even when you're coming off of turn four you don't know if you've got it because so many things can happen before the start-finish line, so it's nice to be able to move on to the next round

"It feels really good. This morning you kind of wake up and you're like, 'What's gonna happen?' This is the first time in this Chase format that I've come into Talladega without a win to be locked into the next round. The feeling of the weekend is definitely a lot different when you're not locked into the next one.

"I feel good about where we're at in this thing to be able to move on. Yeah, we've got speed. We've got momentum. We've got confidence, so let's go."

Logano had entered Sunday's race just barely hanging onto the eighth and final spot by a mere three points over Dillon and really needed either win or a decent finish and a lot of luck coupled with bad luck for the drivers ahead of him to keep his title hopes alive.

In the end, he got both – but it didn't look like the good luck was swinging his way early on.

On the very first green-flag pit stop on lap 40, Logano left his pit stall with the jack still wedged under his no. 22 Ford Fusion. Logano tried to shake the jack loose, but ended up dragging the jack all the way around the 2.88-mile track back to pit road.

Logano managed to stay on the lead lap and rejoined the field with minimal damage, having dodged a major bullet.

Although he fell back all the way to dead last in the field, Logano worked his way back up through the field and back into the top 10 by the half-way point.

Joey Logano (22) drags a jack after pitting on lap 40

With 50 laps to go, Logano had hooked up behind race leader and Penske teammate Ryan Blaney trying to work his way to the lead just a caution flag flew for debris.

Following a round of pit stops, Logano restarted the race second behind Harvick and quickly powered past to take the lead.

Logano would hold the point for the next 40 laps including two late cautions flag that set up a three-lap shootout to the finish.

On the final restart, Logano restarted inside of Scott and got a nice push from Harvick to move ahead and clear them both as the field came around on the backstretch.

While everyone had braced all day for The Big One over the final three laps, it never materialized, and the last laps went green to the finish. Scott tried one last run in the final turn, looking to the high side of Logano, but the race leader moved up to block and shut the door, holding him off to the checkered flag.

While Logano had dodged a major bullet, other Chase contenders weren't as lucky.

Martin Truex, Jr. was eliminated from the Chase after his motor blew on lap 41

Pole sitter Martin Truex, Jr., who had come into the weekend sixth in points, lost the motor in No. 78 Chevrolet just after the first round of pit stops and ended his day on the garage with a last-place finish.

The engine failure was the end of the line for Truex, who had advanced all the way to the Final 4 last season and was tied for the most wins this season but now finds himself on the outside looking in.

"Definitely not the way we wanted today to go – it's a tough way to go out, but proud of the effort and proud of all the guys," said Truex, Jr. "The engines have been great all year and every once in a while you'll have a failure and it's unfortunate that it was with everything on the line. I don't know, it is what it is and it's racing. It's part of it and we'll move on. We're going to go try to win the last five races or whatever is left and have a good end to our season."

And Truex, Jr. wasn't the only one among the favorites not to make the cut into the next round.

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"] On lap 146, Logano's Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski blew an engine in his Ford, ended any chance of saving his title hopes.

Needing nothing less than a win to advance, Keselowski had led a race-high 90 laps before his engine gave up, marking his second straight DNF.

"We just had a tremendous race going, but it wasn't meant to be," said Keselowski. "We were doing the best we could to make a show of it and have some fun and lead some laps and just happy and proud to have a fast car."

Chase Elliott was also among those eliminated after finishing 12th.

Elliott, who was in a must-win situation sitting dead-last among the Chase contenders, was never able to challenge for the win despite logging a few laps at the head of the field and getting a push to the front from teammate Jimmie Johnson.

"We just came up short," said Elliott. "We had a really good car again. You try to make stuff happen and I felt like we were pretty aggressive trying to get to the bottom and try to make things happen there when it was at the top. I just couldn't find myself in the right spot at the right time with the right folks behind us, or at least enough folks. We had some great pushers all day, and they knew our car was fast. It was helpful. We just came up short."

Race Results

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