Optimizing his fuel mileage, Joey Logano won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and advanced to the championship round a week after briefly being eliminated from the NASCAR Cup playoffs.
Logano ran the final 72 laps on one tank of fuel, holding off pole-sitter Christopher Bell by 0.662 seconds for his third victory this season and the 35th of his career. Daniel Suarez finished third and led 57 laps until yielding first to Logano on Lap 261.
The Team Penske star led only the final six laps to win the Round of 8 opener and become the first driver to claim one of four title-eligible slots in the Nov. 10 championship finale at Phoenix Raceway.
“Man we do some fuel mileage stuff, don’t we? Holy cow,” Logano told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider after tying Jimmie Johnson with his record fourth Cup victory at Las Vegas. “What an incredible turn of events here the last week. What a very fast Mustang. We’re going to Championship 4 again. Great calls by (crew chief) Paul (Wolfe), Nick Hensley, our gas man, making sure she’s full. Giving me the good info I need to save fuel and keep the lead that we needed. What an incredible situation. Man, I’m so blessed.
It capped an unbelievable turn of events during the past week for the Logano, who was eliminated from the playoffs at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval for about three hours — until being put back into the Round of 8 when Alex Bowman’s car failed postrace technical inspection nearly three hours later.
Logano won the Round of 8 opener in his two prior championship years — 2018 and 2022. He also won at Las Vegas two years ago to advance to the title round.
The No. 22 Ford has made the championship round in every even-numbered year since the elimination playoffs began: 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.
“I don’t know what the deal is with the even-year thing, but maybe it’s real,” Logano said.
Bell started from the pole and led a race-high 155 laps.
After making his final pit stop from the lead with 38 laps remaining, the Joe Gibbs Racing star rejoined the track about 30 seconds behind first but still nearly chased down Logano for the victory as the race went caution-free.
“I don’t think I’ve come to terms yet (with the second place),” Bell told NBC Sports’ Kim Coon. “Just a bummer. I think everyone on this team did everything perfect today. This thing was obviously on rails. The pit crew did an amazing job. Adam called a great race. Did everything we needed to put this Camry in victory lane, and unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be today.”
With two races remaining before Phoenix, Bell is 42 points above the cutline heading to Homestead-Miami Speedway, where he won last year to advance to the Championship 4.
“It’s a whole new race next week,” Bell said. “This track means nothing for next week. And fortunately, we were able to go and win in Homestead (last year), but nothing’s guaranteed. Just because I ran second today doesn’t mean that I’m going to finish anywhere next week. So yeah,I think the points look pretty good, which is a positive. But you’re never safe in this deal. So we needed to win today. And unfortunately, we didn’t. We’ll go on to the next one.”
Sunday’s 400-mile race at Las Vegas was eventful for championship contenders as only four of the eight remaining playoff drivers finished in the top 10: Logano, Bell, William Byron (fourth) and Denny Hamlin, who rebounded for eighth after spending much of the day outside the top 20.
After falling a lap down because of an unscheduled green-flag pit stop, Kyle Larson rallied for an 11th that kept him 35 points above the playoff cutline.
A Lap 90 incident left championship contenders Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney with significant damage and in serious danger of missing the championship race.
Elliott finished 27 laps down in 33rd just ahead of Blaney, who was seven laps off the pace in 32nd.
After qualifying second, Reddick finished 35th when he was caught in a multicar crash during the restart to begin Stage 2.
Reddick attempted to take the outside lane around Elliott and Martin Truex Jr., who slid up from the bottom and into Elliott. After contact with Elliott, Reddick’s No. 45 Toyota hit the wall and slid down the banking into the fronstretch grass, flipping and landing on its wheels. Though he was able to drive the car to the pits, Reddick had too much damage to continue.
“You just got to be aggressive on restarts,” Reddick told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “It’s obviously how Next Gen racing has been since the beginning. I saw them both of them have a moment, and you’ve got to be aggressive on the restart. It is hard to pass after a while. I made a split-second decision being aggressive. By the time I realized I was in trouble, it was too late with nowhere to go. I needed to make the decision earlier when I saw them sliding to be more conservative to avoid an incident.
“It’s unfortunate. It took us out of the race. We had a really fast Camry and thought we would have been in the mix all day long.”
By winning the first stage for the second consecutive week, Reddick at least salvaged some points with two races remaining to make the championship finale in Phoenix.
“We can still have a good day at Homesetead and be in the mix at Martinsville,” said Reddick, who has three top-five finishes in four starts at Homestead. “Ideally, yeah, it would have been nice to win today. It would be nice to win next week, and that is what we’ll focus on, but thankfully we got some stage points in Stage 1, and we are not absolutely out of it on points yet. We’ve got a few ways, but we have to be perfect from here on out, probably.”
Stage 1 winner: Reddick
Stage 2 winner: Bell
Next: The Round of 8 will continue Sunday, Oct. 27 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on NBC)
