Joey Logano survived an overtime restart to win Sunday’s (Sept. 8) NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, advancing him to the second round of the playoffs.
The victory is Logano’s second at Atlanta and his second of the 2024 season after winning at Nashville Superspeedway in June.
Daniel Suarez, Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell and Alex Bowman completed the top five, with Tyler Reddick, Kyle Busch, Chase Elliott, William Byron and Austin Cindric rounding out the top 10.
“Incredible execution by the team,” Logano told NBC Sports. “When it’s playoff time, it’s our time. We kind of got stuck in the back a little bit, it was hard to get track position back. Had my teammate [Ryan] Blaney behind me, that really helped out on that last lap.”
Pole-sitter Michael McDowell led the first 29 laps of the race, with the top half of the field becoming single file early. Business picked up as the field approached lap 20, with much of the field becoming two-wide.
On lap 31, defending Cup Series champion Blaney was pushed to the lead by Cindric, with the pair moving around Kyle Larson to assume the top two positions. On lap 56, Kyle Larson got loose in turn 1 and over-corrected his No. 5 Camaro, sending his car hard into the outside wall.
As Larson slid back down the track, the No. 14 of Chase Briscoe — another playoff driver — would slam into the back of Larson, heavily damaging both cars.
Blaney won stage one under caution, earning his fourth stage victory of 2024. Alex Bowman won the race off of pit road and led the field to the restart on lap 68.
It was Cindric who took control of the race early in stage 2, with non-playoff drivers such as Busch, Chastain and Justin Haley both making impressive runs into the top 10.
On lap 114, the caution flag flew for debris, allowing the field to make their stage two pit stop under caution. Cindric beat Bowman off pit road, retaining the lead. Bubba Wallace was bit with a speeding penalty, relegating him to the back of the field. Bell also incurred a penalty on the round of stops.
Just as he did in February, Cindric won stage two, with Haley incurring a penalty for the start of stage 3 after blocking a driver below the white line.
Chastain beat the field off pit road as McDowell took two tires to move up to second for the ensuing restart.
The intensity picked up at the start of stage 3 with…
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