Logano Overcomes Drained Fuel Tank, Five Overtime Finish to Win at Nashville

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

LEBANON, Tenn. – Winner. Finally.

After a season in which he had yet to win a race to punch his ticket into the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Joey Logano will no longer have to answer the question of when he would win after surviving a five-overtime finish and a fuel tank running dry to win Sunday’s Ally 400 at Nashville.

Ascending to the lead on the fourth overtime when the leaders ahead of him started running out of fuel, Logano was in just as much danger of running out of fuel himself, but his No. 22 team elected to gamble to try to bank a win and secure their spot in the Playoffs.

It paid off.

Logano and Chase Briscoe battled for the lead in the fourth overtime before another yellow flag flew to push the race to a fifth, a mercifully final overtime restart.

Fuel concerns ramped up even further with the race now 30 laps past its original scheduled distance, Logano just had to put all of that out of his mind and focus forward out of the windshield toward the checkered flag waiting in the distance.

Once again, it was Logano and Briscoe on the front row, both with what should have been empty fuel tanks, but Logano got a clean jump on Briscoe and secured a two car-length lead over Briscoe and Zane Smith, who was now running third.

The field was able to make it to the white flag finally with a new challenger in Tyler Reddick, who had rushed from sixth up to the runner-up spot on the restart. Nonetheless, they would all have to get past a determined Logano if they wanted to score the win for themselves.

Both Reddick and Smith appeared to be in position to make a run at Logano over the final circuit around the 1.33-mile oval, but neither could pull it off in the end as Logano streaked across the line 0.068 seconds ahead of Smith, with Reddick finishing the day in third-place.

“A lot of teamwork there,” Logano said. “You have to give a lot of credit to our fueler, Nick Hensley, our engine department with Roush Yates building obviously some engines that could also manage fuel really well, and some guts – a lot of cajones made it happen.

“It’s been a hard season and being on that cut line, I tell you it sucks.  It’s just not fun.  It’s hard and you just want a little bit of relief of the pressure and with seven weeks to go until the playoffs it gives us a chance to breathe for a second and start just kind of working on our car a little bit differently and just sleep better, to be honest with you.  I’m proud of this team and proud to be here in Victory Lane, for sure.”

“Obviously so happy with the result,” Smith said. “But when you hear for like 10 laps that ‘he is supposed to run out, he is supposed to run out’, and then you see him shaking the car across the line and you just finished second, that hurts.”

Ryan Preece scored a season-best fourth place finish on Sunday, with Chris Buescher rounding out the top-five finishers.

The remainder of the top-10 went to Ryan Blaney, Bubba Wallace, Kyle Larson, Daniel Hemric, and Noah Gragson.

Prior to the chaos of the quintuple overtimes, polesitter Denny Hamlin appeared to be the driver to beat, but with each consecutive caution, fuel concerns for the No. 11 Toyota continued to grow. While he was able to save enough to maintain his position in the lead through the first three overtimes, a fourth overtime was just too much and he had to peel off onto pit road for fuel.

Hamlin would end the day in 12^th place after leading three times for 70 laps, but it will be one that definitely got away for the Joe Gibbs Racing pilot.

“We ran out under caution,” Hamlin said. “He (Chris Gabehart, crew chief) was monitoring fuel pressure. I let him know what the fuel pressure was. We were fine, just running out of gas and we did under caution. It was the right call. I was going down pitlane there out of gas.

“I’m surprised we lasted that many green-white-checkers honestly. Certainly, stinks being 15 seconds from a win at the end and then 10 seconds from a win, and then to finish 12th. It’s just part of it.”

Halfway through the second stage, the race was halted for one hour, 21 minutes and 20 seconds when a band of heavy rain and lightning blew through the area. The storm passed quickly and the Air Titans were dispatched in short order to start getting the track dried and back in racing shape.

At approximately 5:40 PM Central, the race resumed with Christopher Bell in the lead over Tyler Reddick.

Bell would go on to win the second stage in addition to having already won the first stage. However, Bell’s day would take a turn for the worse.

After leading six times for 131 laps, Bell found himself buried mid-pack early in the final stage. With the changed aerodynamics of running back in the pack, Bell just lost it all by himself in Turn 2 on Lap 229, spinning into the outside wall.

The damage was too much for Bell to be able to continue and he would be scored in 36^th place when all was said and done.

“I just put myself in a pretty bad spot going into turn one,” Bell said. “I got bottled up there and just lost my cool to make something happen and I put myself in a bad spot and spun out.

“I mean, it’s disappointing, but there’s a lot to be positive about. We won two stages, so we got more Playoff points which is really good. Yeah, and the performance of our team is doing really well, so hopefully we can keep the ball rolling and I think we can win a lot more races.”

Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway Results