(Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images for NASCAR)
Johnson’s day, however, became doomed on lap 188 thanks to Kurt Busch. One week ago, Johnson ended Busch’s day after wrecking him at Infineon.
And, on Sunday, Busch returned the favor after he got loose and bounced off Johnson.
The contact sent Johnson to the back end of the top ten, and he never recovered to challenge for the win and would finish in the ninth position.
Then there was the day of the Connecticut rookie Joey Logano. Logano made his Sprint Cup Series debut at New Hampshire last year.
This season, Logano is in the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, which was vacated by Tony Stewart who started his own team.
Logano started the day 24 on the grid and was not a contender for the win most of the day. Things went from bad to worse on lap 182, when he blew out the left rear tire and went for a spin.
Having to pit for repairs put Logano down a lap to the leaders, but seven laps later, when caution flag No. 10 flew, Logano received the “Lucky Dog” award and was put back on the lead lap.
As the race restarted, rain moved into the area and teams started playing the strategy game to position themselves near the front of the field.
Logano did just enough to stay in touch with the leaders, and, as everyone started hitting pit road, he began to pick up positions. By lap 250, he was in the top five. Ten laps later, he was running second.
Ryan Newman was the leader on lap 263 as the rain began to fall, only Newman couldn’t wait it out since he ran out of fuel and had to come to pit road, which put Logano in the lead.
On lap 266, the yellow flag came out for rain as Logano still led. He, however, needed to do all he could to save as much fuel as possible as they rode around the track.
NASCAR would bring the cars to pit road and red flag the race on lap 273, as they made decisions on the future of the race and consulted the radar.
New Hampshire does not have lights, and, in order for the track to get dried off and the race restarted, the rain would need to quickly come and go.
It didn’t and at 5:42 p.m. Eastern Time, Joey Logano was declared the winner.
It’s Logano’s first career win, making him the youngest winner in Sprint Cup Series history.
Jeff Gordon, who led sixty five laps on Sunday, was trying to run Logano down as the rain came and the race was called.
He ended up finishing second.
For Logano, he got to celebrate with the crew chief who told Tony Stewart to pit in this race last year with rain in the area. Stewart pitted and lost the race because of it when it did start to rain shortly afterward.
“We overcame a lot,” Logano said. “I figured out this sport is a roller coaster earlier this season. I go up and down, up and down...and one week you could win and the next week you could be 43rd.”
The race's biggest incident of the day came on a restart when Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun the tires and caused the drivers behind him to stack up.
Kyle Busch attempted to go three-wide and ended up turning Martin Truex Jr. into eight other cars. Truex looked to throw his helmet at Busch, but thought better of it and would later blast Busch to the media.
It was a wreck that Logano avoided on his way to joining Brad Keselowski and David Reutimann as first time winners in 2009.
“Yeah we got lucky obviously...the rain came at just the right time.”
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