Joey Logano's 3rd Win in a Row Benefited from Controversial Talladega Ending
It's never too late for Talladega Superspeedway mayhem. The track's official lull is a false sense of security.
Joey Logano's third consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup victory ended in a memorable muddle. He swept the Chase for the Sprint Cup's Contender (second) round.
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"I didn't think it was possible," Logano said. "Come to Chase time, everyone is bringing their A-game, everything they got, the best they can, not only with their race cars, but every driver is trying to find that extra little bit."
That extra little bit in the CampingWorld.com 500 was a few feet, separating Logano's Ford and Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Chevy, when a yellow light flipped on and a wreck commenced behind them.
Also was there a sense of deja vu.
"I was in front of [Earnhardt] the whole time," Logano said, "then the caution light came out, and it's over. We lift. It's a moot point after that."
Not to mention harshly anticlimactic and richly unsatisfying.
Logano's ticket to the next round, the final eight, had already been punched with his victories in the preceding weeks. Earnhardt had to win. Second wasn't enough. Earnhardt was, however, gentlemanly in his remarks.
"I'm going to get asked about the green-white-checkered rule, which I'm fine with," he said. "I feel like no matter the rules, when the race is over, I can live with the results as long as everybody else is going by the same rules.
"I felt like, per the rule book, it sorted out and I finished second. I'm okay with that. We could argue that they could have waited another hundred feet to throw the caution, but they didn't have to. They threw it when they needed to."
Logano was one of few happy, and Earnhardt one of few relaxed.
After announcing that the race at Talladega would be limited to one attempt at the prescribed (green-white-checkered) finish procedure, naturally, the first time out, they needed two.
The conduct of this restrictor-plate race was odd from the outset. The first 132 laps were run without yellow flags. The first two were for fluid on the track.
Earnhardt, who clearly drove the superior car, led 61 laps but had trouble getting onto pit road three different times. Each cost him track position. Each time he came storming back.
Then, with overtime necessary, needing only two clean laps, two wrecks took place. In the former, NASCAR officials ruled that it wasn't a restart at all because the leaders had not crossed the start-finish line. It gave Earnhardt one last shot at Logano.
| Driver | Manufacturer | Victories | Avg. Finish | Past Titles |
| Joey Logano | Ford | 6 | 7.7 | 0 |
| Carl Edwards | Toyota | 2 | 14.4 | 0 |
| Jeff Gordon | Chevy | 0 | 14.7 | 4 |
| Kurt Busch | Chevy | 2 | 10.7 | 1 |
| Brad Keselowski | Ford | 1 | 11.0 | 1 |
| Martin Truex Jr. | Chevy | 1 | 12.5 | 0 |
| Kevin Harvick | Chevy | 3 | 9.3 | 1 |
| Kyle Busch | Toyota | 4 | 12.1 | 0 |
Then the race ended—leaders safely getting past the line—with another crash behind them, confusion and a lengthy period of review before the officials certified the Logano triumph.
Into this final melee arrived the alleged cunning of the reigning champion, Kevin Harvick, whose disadvantage was that his car was incapable of going faster than while idling around track in a caution parade. Contact between Harvick's car and Trevor Bayne's touched off the melee that ended the race in Logano's favor and enabled Harvick to advance miraculously into the Eliminator Round.
Harvick was either magnificently fortunate or diabolically clever. Several of his peers suspected the latter.
"It did surprise me how [NASCAR] called it, but past that, it's their ball, it's their field, it's their bat, it's their everything. Play along," Kyle Busch said, and he managed to advance with an 11th-place finish.
Gone from eligibility for the championship are Earnhardt, Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman.
Kenseth, who found himself and his Toyota batted around in all three Contender Round races, thought Harvick spun out Bayne on purpose, and so did Hamlin.
Referring to Harvick, Kenseth said, "He knew if he put [Bayne] into a slow spin, the race was over and he'd make it (to the next round).
"It feels like we lost control here the last two weeks. I don't think that's what racing is about."
"(Number) Four (Harvick) could only run about 30 miles per hour," Hamlin added, "so I think he saw people coming, and he knew he was going to be 30th, last car on the lead lap (at the finish), so he caused a wreck."
Harvick's explanation, to Fox Sports' Alan Cavanna: "It wasn't really running well on the restarts. Then, at the end, I was trying to get out of the way. I don't know if I clipped the Six (Bayne) or if he came across as I was coming up.
"It was one of those days where everything went well until the very end, until the bottom fell out on those last couple of restarts when [the car] cooled off. It has a broken exhaust pipe or something."
The eight remaining contenders—no, wait, there were 12 Contenders, so now the eight must be Eliminators—are Logano, Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr., Harvick and Kyle Busch—begin anew, even in points, next week in Martinsville, Virginia, and then on to Fort Worth, Texas, and Avondale, Arizona. Only four remain for the season finale in Homestead, Florida, on November 22, when the title will be determined.
Logano, the first driver to win six races this season, said afterward that he had Earnhardt covered, even had the duel not been abortive.
"Could we have held him off? Of course. We did earlier in the race. We were fighting him hard. Would it have been easy? No. It was going to be very challenging.
"What we've shown here this last round is a big deal, but the fact of the matter is, we're back to zero (points advantage) again. What we have going for us that others don't is a lot of confidence. We got momentum and we're relaxed."
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All quotes are taken from NASCAR media, team and manufacturer sources unless otherwise noted.
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