CONCORD, North Carolina — After rain delayed the Bank of America 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon, Joey Logano put on a dominating performance to become the first race winner in the three-race second round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Kevin Harvick finished second. He was the only driver seemingly able to keep up with Logano for any significant amount of time after taking over the second position on a restart following a lap 194 caution. But late in the race, not even Harvick had anything for Logano as Logano pulled away in the closing laps.
Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin and Kurt Busch rounded out the top-five.
Logano was one of seven drivers who stayed out during the fourth caution of the race on lap 75 that came as a result of Dale Earnhardt Jr. hitting the wall because of a tire issue. Logano inherited the race lead from Matt Kenseth by staying out. Logano led most of the remaining laps of the 334-lap race, except for laps during cycles of green-flag pit stops. During the final green-flag cycle of stops that started with about 55 laps remaining, Sam Hornish Jr., off-cycle, stayed out several laps longer to lead before finally heading for pit road, handing the lead back over to Logano at lap 300.
Earnhardt was the second Hendrick Motorsports driver to see his chances of a race win fly out the window because of a tire issue. Kahne fell off the pace and made an unscheduled pit stop on lap 40 after blowing a tire. As a result, he went two laps down. He exited the race completely after a second tire issue sent Kahne into the wall, bringing out a yellow flag on lap 61.
A third of the four-driver Hendrick stable, Jimmie Johnson, had trouble of his own in the final third of the race. Johnson got into the top-five by staying out during a yellow flag in the first half of the race and ran in the top-three through a significant portion of the race before an engine issue sent him to the garage with just under 80 laps to go.
Kenseth started on the pole and led most of the way before pitting and handing over the lead to Logano. A slow pit stop when his jackman slipped and others remaining on the race track relegated Kenseth to 13th for the restart. He worked his way back into the top-10 before getting caught up in an on-track incident with Ryan Newman with just over 155 laps to go. Then, with just under 100 laps to go, Kenseth slammed into the wall because of a right-front tire issue.
Kyle Larson got into the top-five of the running order before the halfway point of the race, but significant contact with Kyle Busch at the entrance of pit road when the race was already under the seventh caution of the race before lap 200. Damage to both cars took both drivers out of contention for the race win. Busch had run in the top-five throughout the race to that point.
Suarez closer to Xfinity title
CONCORD, North Carolina — Sunoco Rookie of the Year contender Daniel Suarez continued his impressive run in the NASCAR XFINITY Series with a fourth-place finish in Saturday night’s Drive for the Cure 300, tops among series regulars.
The top five was Suarez’s seventh in 29 starts for Joe Gibbs Racing this season, and it left him seventh in the series standings with four races left. Though Suarez is 128 points behind series leader Chris Buescher, he’s only 16 back of fifth-place Darrell Wallace Jr.
The top five points finishers earn places on the stage at the awards banquet at season’s end.
The next step for Suarez is a victory, but the 23-year-old Mexican driver has found the competition exponentially more difficult than in his previous series, the NASCAR Mexico Series and the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East and West.
“I’ve never had to work that hard to be running in the top 10, top five,” Suarez said after Saturday night’s race. “The difference between these, what I’m racing right now in the NASCAR XFINITY Series and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, versus what I was running in the last few years — NASCAR Mexico and NASCAR K&N and local racing in road course and open wheel stuff, the competition is so much more difficult here.
Suarez has four races left this season — at Kansas, Texas, Phoenix and Homestead — in which to try to score his first victory.
“We just need to put all the luck together and our stuff together to try to win a race,” he said. “I feel like we’re close, and we have the speed. We just need to put our pieces together.”