Joey Logano Steals Victory In Charlotte Xfinity Race

Joey Logano celebrates in victory lane at Charlotte

Jerry Markland/NASCAR via Getty Images

Joey Logano might not have finished all 800 miles of Saturday's doubleheader at Charlotte Motor Speedway, but he led the ones that counted to steal a victory in the evening Drive for the Cure NASCAR Xfinity Series event – the final event in the opening round of the Xfinity Series Chase.

Logano got around Kyle Larson and Justin Allgaier in a three-wide battle for the lead with 11 laps to go and beat out Elliott Sadler to score his second Xfinity Series win of the season and 27^th of his career.

Daniel Suarez finished third, followed by Larson and Erik Jones.

Sadler and Suarez advanced to the next round of the Chase with race victories at Kentucky and Dover, respectively. Ty Dillon, Brennan Poole, Ryan Sieg and Brandon Jones were eliminated from the Chase

Earlier in the day, Logano limped home 80 laps down after walling his no. 22 Ford twice during in the afternoon Sprint Cup race, ending up with a 36^th-place finish – but a win in the Xfinity race took a little of sting out of that.

"It was kind of an all-or-nothing move, to be able to get the lead and ultimately to hold him off and get the checkered flag. It was a lot of fun to be able to do that," said Logano of the three-wide pass for the lead. "We had a good car – maybe not the best car… but the pit crew did their job to keep us in position to make an awesome restart there at the end.

"What a fun night, for sure. That was a good recovery from the first part of my day. I feel a lot better than I did about three or four hours ago when I tried to knock down the wall."

Larson had dominated the race, leading 165 of the opening 187 laps, trading the lead four times with Jones, who had entered the race tenth in points and was desperate to climb into the top eight to advance to the Round of 8..

Ironically, it was Jones who set up Logano's run to the front after a tire got away from his pit crew during his final pit stop on lap 177, wiping out the huge lead build up by Larson, who had lapped all but three cars in the field.

Following the final caution with 12 laps to go, Larson restarted as the leader followed by Allgaier and Logano, but just one lap later, Allgaier pulled out to the high side to challenge Larson for the lead, and was soon joined by Logano who dived to the inside to make it three wide.

By the time the three reached the end of turn four, it was Logano and Larson side by side for the lead, with Logano pulling ahead as they came into the frontstretch.

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"] Larson started to chase down Logano in the closing laps, and at one point nearly pulled even with him but as they battled for the top spot, Sadler took advantage to close the gap on the two, opening up a three-way battle for the lead.

With three laps to go, Larson drove his Chevrolet too hard going through turns one and two and scraped the wall, allowing Sadler to power past Larson on the inside to take second.

Once in second, Sadler tried to reel in the race leader, but Logano managed to hold on to win by nearly half a second over Sadler.

Besides the race up front, there was also the race for the final spots to advance into the Round of 8 in the Xfinity Series Chase.

With Suarez and Sadler already locked in, and the remaining top four spots fairly secure, all eyes were on drivers in the bottom half of the 12-driver field, including Dillon, Poole and Jones, who were all fighting for the eighth spot.

Dillon struggled with an ill-handling race car all day and in the closing laps and had a slow pit stop that put him tied with Darrell Wallace, Jr. for the final transfer spot.

In the end, despite a helping hand from his brother Austin who gave up spot on the track for him, Dillon ended the day in 11^th and fell one point shy of Wallace for the eighth and final spot – eliminating him from the Chase.

"It's heartbreaking," said Dillon. "We're a team that should have been in the final round.

"You can't explain it. You've got to be able to step up and be a championship team when it matters most, and we didn't."

Among those advancing were Allgaier, Brendan Gaughan, Ryan Reed and Jones.

Blake Koch, driving for a start-up team that only came together at the start of the season, also advanced along with Wallace.

"We don't deserve to be in the Chase," said Wallace. "We had to dig for it on that last restart, so that put us in by one point. We just have to work hard. I think we all had plenty of thoughts in our head of just trying to get by and go home and forget this race and go on to next week, but we can do that now but know that we're going into the next round is pretty good."

Race Results

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