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…
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