Who… should you be talking about after the race?
The South Point 400 looked like Ross Chastain’s race to lose at several points during the day, but a cluster of late restarts at Las Vegas Motor Speedway put him in third for the final restart and set up a battle for the win between the NASCAR Cup Series’ two most aggressive drivers.
But it was Joey Logano who fired the last shot, running down Chastain with fewer than 10 laps remaining. Logano shaved Chastain’s lead from over a second, passing the No. 1 with three laps to go to take the win and take his place in the title race in three weeks.
Let’s go get a Championship! #NASCARPlayoffs #The22In22 pic.twitter.com/2Yc9CHJmuY
— Joey Logano (@joeylogano) October 16, 2022
Chastain didn’t make it easy, throwing hard block after hard block, but lapped traffic allowed Logano to get alongside Chastain. From there, the No. 22 made the winning pass and pulled away before Chastain could make a last-ditch run. Despite the drivers’ reputations, there were no on-track fireworks, but both put their tenacity on full display in a hard, clean race for the win.
And don’t forget Chase Briscoe. Briscoe was among the first four drivers to be eliminated on a lot of playoff brackets. But Briscoe, who won his way into the postseason at Phoenix Raceway last spring only to have a fairly mediocre regular season, avoided trouble and thus avoided first-round elimination. After making it past the second cut too, he recovered from early struggles that saw him among the back half of the field to contend for the win, leading six laps before fading to fourth on the final run.
Briscoe and his team took a Vegas gamble on track position amid the late mayhem that struck some drivers, and that paid off handsomely with a fourth-place finish. Briscoe is still nine points below the cut line with two races before the final elimination, but suddenly the championship race looks a lot more realistic for the second-year driver. And remember where that win came this spring?
What… is the buzz about?
It was racecar 2, drivers 0 heading into Las Vegas. Earlier this week, Alex Bowman announced that he’ll be out for at least another two weeks after following a concussion suffered at Texas Motor Speedway last month. That means, at minimum, five weeks out of the seat for Bowman.
Overshadowing almost everything else this week, though, was Kurt Busch’s announcement that he’ll miss at least most, if not all of 2023 due to…
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