One block, then a second thrown by Matt Kenseth, all in a desperate effort to keep Joey Logano from taking the lead during the final laps on Sunday at Kansas Speedway: a despair brought upon due to an insurmountable points deficit that meant nearly certain Chase for the Sprint Cup elimination unless he won either Kansas or next week at Talladega Superspeedway. – Joey Logano finally gave NASCAR the Chase for the Sprint Cup moment it wanted.
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It is the fifth win this season for Joey Logano, tying Matt Kenseth for the most on the season. He could have prevented all kinds of controversy by deciding that second place was good enough.
Just behind Kenseth was Logano, who appeared to have the faster auto and seemed to be sizing Kenseth up for the winning pass. Unlike Kenseth, Logano didn’t need a victory Sunday. While that is arguably what it was, the impact of it wasn’t lost on Kenseth, who now finds himself in a precarious spot in the standings, last among the drivers looking to move on as the final eight making it to the Eliminator Round.
“We were a little tight that run, I was catching everybody in front of us”, recalled Dillon after the race.
Unconcerned about any future reprisals, Logano maintains he raced Kenseth equitably and never with the intent of turning him around.
Logano, feeling that Kenseth had blocked him earlier, tagged the rear of his opponent and the No. 20 Dollar General Toyota slid sideways through Turn 4 leaving a plume of smoke in its wake. Busch won after leading 56 laps, while Kenseth led 148 laps and finished second. I feel like I got fenced twice down the straightaways.
As poorly as Jeff Gordon’s vehicle was handling on Sunday during his last run at Kansas Speedway, the driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet was in danger of losing touch with the top contenders in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. He’s won there before – in 2012, when he managed to escape a 25-car wreck, the kind of “big one” Talladega is famous for that could thoroughly shake up the Chase standings at any point during the course of an afternoon.
“I thought we did an excellent job this weekend of controlling the things we could control”, Kenseth said.
“I have nothing to talk about really”, Kenseth said.
Conversely, it was a good day for non-Chasers, despite a hard crash at half distance for Clint Bowyer which he thankfully walked away from.
He said he has no plans to confront Logano but issued a vague warning that it isn’t over between the two of them with five Chase races left. “And the way we’re going to race [is] hard, and I’m going to race the way people race me, and I expect the same back. A few of the guys in front of us had a few troubles”. “We ran each other hard”. “I would have hoped we could have been 25”.
Logano was able to dominate the resulting restart to claim a second win of the Contender stage ahead of Denny Hamlin and Johnson. Kasey Kahne was fourth, followed by Chase drivers Kyle Busch and Kurt Busch. “I wanted to be seventh or better entering this weekend, and obviously second was a good run for us”. Both Martin Truex Jr and Kevin Harvick looked set for solid top-10 finishes, before being served with stop/go penalties for separate pitlane incidents.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. will also need help, if not a win, at Talladega as well. That dropped him off the lead lap, too, and Earnhardt wound up two laps down and in 21st place.
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“We are lucky to come out of it as good as we did”, was Harvick’s verdict. He’s seven points up on the cut line-seven valuable spots at a track that can wipe that out in one swing of the scythe.
