By JENNA FRYER AP Auto Racing Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Knocked out of the playoffs this time last week, Joey Logano seized on his reversal of fortune to become the first driver locked into NASCAR’s championship finale.
Logano was below the cutline and eliminated from the eight-driver field when he left Charlotte Motor Speedway last Sunday. But when Alex Bowman’s car failed post-race inspection, Bowman was disqualified and Logano reinstated to the playoff field.
The only two-time Cup champion in the playoff field, Logano passed Daniel Suarez with five laps remaining Sunday for his fourth career victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It was the second win of the playoffs for Logano and the Team Penske driver makes a Ford the first one locked into the winner-take-all final four at Phoenix Raceway next month.
He needed a massive fuel-saving effort to win.
“Man, we did some fuel mileage stuff, didn’t we?” Logano said. “What an incredible turn of events here the last week. It takes the whole team to do the fuel mileage stuff. Not just the engineers, spotter. It takes all of us to do it. Total team win.”
Logano had to hold off pole-sitter Christopher Bell, who led a race-high 156 laps, over the closing two laps. A late pit stop put Bell 30 seconds behind Suarez, and Bell was cruising in his Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing trying to run down Suarez when Logano got to Suarez first.
Bell didn’t have enough to catch Logano and finished 0.662 seconds back.
“We’re going to the championship four again!” Logano shouted on the frontstretch. He and Kyle Busch are the only two-time active champions, with Logano now in position to win a third Cup title.
Bell, who has made it to the championship race the last two years, was clearly disappointed after such a dominating day.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t think I’ve come to terms with this yet,” Bell said. “Just a bummer. I think everyone on this team did everything perfect. Just because I ran second today doesn’t mean I’m going to finish anywhere next week. You’re never safe in this deal, so we needed to win today and unfortunately, we didn’t.”
Suarez, who was eliminated from the playoffs last week, finished third in a Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing.
“It’s a little heartbreaking. I think we could have won it,” Suarez said.
William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports was fourth as he attempts to qualify for the championship race for a second consecutive year.
“It’s going to take a win, I feel like, so we have to keep working for it and keep running up front,” Byron said. “If we run up front, it will do two things — we’ll be able to compete for a win and score a lot of points. We just have to keep running like this.”
Byron was followed by teammate Bowman in fifth and then Gibbs driver Martin Truex Jr., who was eliminated from the playoffs in the first round in his final season of full-time NASCAR racing.
Gibbs driver Denny Hamlin was eighth in a massive recovery on an underwhelming day and only four playoff drivers finished in the top 10.
“Not a clean day. That certainly sums it up. You’ll have that,” Hamlin said. “We did the best we could to get the best finish.”
Kyle Larson, winner of two straight at Las Vegas as well as last week at Charlotte, came from two laps down to finish 11th. He was the top-seeded driver at the start of Sunday and is now third in the standings behind Logano and Bell.
“It was a messy, messy day. This was a long, hard-fought 11th-place finish,” Larson said. “We got the most we could out of the rest of the day.”
The remaining three playoff drivers had terrible days as reigning Cup champion Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and regular-season champion Tyler Reddick were all collected in the same early crash.
Logano is locked into the championship race, while Bell, Larson and Byron are above the cutline. Hamlin, Reddick, Blaney and Elliott are all below the elimination mark with two races remaining in the round.
Regular-season champ rolls car
Reddick rolled his car early to drop into a deep playoff hole.
Reddick, who had just won the first stage to pick up 10 bonus points, was involved in a multicar wreck moments after the start of the second stage. The Toyota from 23XI Racing made contact with Elliott to trigger the crash.
“You’ve just got to be aggressive on restarts, I just had a split second to make a decision,” Reddick said. “By the time I realized I was in trouble, it was too late. There was nowhere really to go. Be a little conservative, that’s what we needed to do. We’ll learn from it.”
Reddick was attempting to gain on-track position and misjudged how much room he had.
“I thought the hole was there; it wasn’t. It closed so quickly,” Reddick said on his radio.
The crash also collected Blaney, who had driven from last in the field into the top 20 after a crash in Saturday practice prevented Blaney from making a qualifying lap.
Blaney and Elliott were able to continue, but the crash ended Reddick’s race. Blaney finished 32nd, Elliott was 33rd and Reddick was 35th.
After, Blaney revealed he was suffering from a headache after the crash until the finish.
“My head was killing me,” said Blaney, who requested Advil during the race. “I was fine until the end and then my head started to kill me again.”
Up next
NASCAR moves to Homestead-Miami Speedway next Sunday for the middle race of the round of eight. Bell is the defending race winner.