When there is an opportunity to win, especially in a division as competitive as the NASCAR Cup Series, you have to take it.
That’s exactly what Joey Logano and Paul Wolfe were able to do in Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, using fuel strategy to capture the win in the opening race of the semi-final round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Now, the Middletown, Connecticut native is locked into the championship race at Phoenix Raceway and will look to capture his third NASCAR Cup Series title — after his post-season hopes were revived with Bowman’s DQ.
“Oh my gosh. It’s an incredible turn of events coming from what was at the end of last weekend and what it was like Sunday night after a couple hours after the race and to this Sunday,” said Logano. “This sport is just incredible. Things change, but what a team I’ve got. I stood out there at the start-finish line and it takes a total effort.”
With the race’s final caution flag, for a spinning Ty Gibbs, coming at Lap 194, Sunday’s 400-mile contest was setting up perfectly to come down to fuel mileage. With a 69-lap run to the finish, that split the field in half.
Christopher Bell, the race’s polesitter and dominator, took on the more conventional path among lead-lap drivers, running the final stint of the race with a pit stop in the middle.
Logano, who has often been regarded as one of the most skilled fuel savers in NASCAR, was one of the 11 drivers in the field who chose to stretch their fuel tanks to the end of the event.
When it was clear that Logano would not run out of gas, the Team Penske driver turned on the afterburners, making the pass on Daniel Suarez with six laps to go.
After making that crucial pass, Logano needed to run the fastest laps he possibly could, to hold off Christopher Bell, who had already closed the gap from 30-plus seconds down to less than four at the time of the pass.
“Obviously, the car had to be pretty good. It was solid, but when you think about what it takes to win a fuel mileage race, you’ve got to have a good engine,” added Logano. “You’ve got to have good engineers calculating stuff. You’ve got to have good communication communicating what they see and being able to make sure that I only gave up the right amount of spots on the racetrack and trying to get to the 99 in front and keep the 20 behind.”
For the second consecutive year, Bell just ran out of laps to take over the race lead, having to settle for a second-place result after leading a race-high 155 laps of the afternoon.
While Bell won’t be locked into the Championship 4, he will leave Las Vegas with a significant points margin over the cutline, heading to Homestead and Martinsville, two racetracks he’s won at before.
Daniel Suarez, who was on the same strategy as race-winner Joey Logano, finished in third place. Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron and Alex Bowman finished fourth and fifth, utilizing the same strategy as Bell.
Martin Truex, Jr. had a solid run in his final Las Vegas start in the NASCAR Cup Series, finishing sixth, with Ross Chastain just behind him in seventh place.
Denny Hamlin stretched the fuel in his No. 11 Toyota Camry XSE to score a top-10 finish, despite a disastrous afternoon for the Joe Gibbs Racing team. While the Chesterfield, Virginia native remains below the cutline, the damage appears to only be minimal.
John Hunter Nemechek recorded a much-needed top-10 on that same strategy, finishing ninth, while RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher rounded out the top-10.
RESULTS: NCS South Point 400 at Las Vegas
Kyle Larson finished 11th but rebounded from being multiple laps down at one point in the race. The Hendrick Motorsports driver had a rough go at things, with a piece of aluminum getting stuck in the nose, and then later, an abhorrent pit stop.
Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, and Tyler Reddick all had difficult afternoons at Las Vegas, after all three were caught up in a strange wreck on the frontstretch.
Tyler Reddick, who finished a disappointing 35th, got the worst of the incident, flipping upside down on the frontstretch, severely damaging his 23XI Racing Toyota Camry TRD.
Elliott and Blaney also sustained damage in the wreck. The Hendrick Motorsports driver went to the garage to fix a mechanical issue after clearing the DVP, finishing 26 laps down.
As for Blaney, the defending champion of the Cup Series, an already bad weekend got worse, after breaking the toe link on his No. 12 Ford Mustang Dark Horse — which was already a backup car after a practice wreck.
Blaney (32nd), Elliott (33rd), and Reddick (35th) all will have major deficits to make up heading to Homestead and Martinsville.
