In what was supposed to be an event run on Sunday night, NASCAR along with teams and stakeholders decided to move the race up by one full day after weather in the Southern California area would descend with rain, potential floods, and high winds.
In moving up the event NASCAR would also scrap heat races and last chance events in a condensed schedule that would use practice and qualifying to set up the field for the 22 drivers on speed and one provisional that would be taken by 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney.
Denny Hamlin would start from the pole over Logano who would get the jump on him to lead the first lap before Hamlin would battle back to take the lead back once again. Hamlin’s teammate Gibbs would also get around for the second spot.
Hamlin would get away from Gibbs until closing in on the rear of the field within 30 laps of the green flag allowing Gibbs to close back in for the lead while putting Gragson the first car a lap down in the race. Gibbs would use Gilliland and other cars to make the pick and take the lead away by the 50-lap mark.
While Gibbs would scoot away from the field putting Stenhouse, Nemechek and 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney a lap down, Hamlin would continue to struggle to get back to the bottom of the track allowing a half-dozen cars to get around him before stabilizing.
The first caution of the night would come out at lap 70 when Todd Gilliland’s car would jump out from under him heading into the turn sending him spinning and stopping up by the wall.
Green would go back in the air with five laps to go before the halfway break with Gibbs leading the way over Logano, and Kyle Busch. Gibbs lead wouldn’t last long with Logano getting a jump on the restart to take the lead allowing Ky. Busch to shove his way through to take second place.
Caution would once again come back out with one lap to go to the halfway point setting up another restart for Logano leading over Kyle Busch.
Logano would take the caution flag for the halfway point as the leader as Kyle Busch who was running second on the restart would get steam rolled over by Larson Gibbs and Byron to finish at the halfway break in fifth.
Following the 10-minute halfway break, green would only be displayed for three laps before Wallace would get tagged by teammate Reddick collecting Elliott, McDowell, and others. Elliott would drive off and head to the garage where the team would go under the car looking at suspension damage.
After assessing the damage to the No. 9 machine the team would park the car for the night ending Elliott’s night after completing 77 laps.
Caution would once again come back out on the restart and before a single lap could be completed when Ross Chastain would go for a spin. During the caution, NASCAR announced Tyler Reddick jumped the previous restart sending him to the rear of the field from seventh.
Once things would settle out after back-to-back cautions, Gibbs would take control of the event moving out to a near three-second lead over Logano and others chasing him while passing 100 complete.
With 30 to go Gibbs would once again catch lapped traffic and get hung up allowing Logano to cut the three-plus second lead down to under one-second.
Caution would once again be displayed with 10 laps to go when McDowell and Chastain would make contact. Meanwhile, just prior to the caution, Haley would slow on track and barely make it back to the infield to end his night.
The restart would come with 10 to go Gibbs would take off as the field would move Logano out of the way moving him from second back to sixth. Hamlin would then move Gibbs out of the way to take the lead allowing Busch and others to get by before caution would come out with one to go as Gibbs would struggle back in the field before getting spun.
With the seventh caution of the night, it would send The Clash into overtime with Hamlin and Busch dueling it out to the end with Hamlin coming out on top over Busch, Blaney, Logano and Larson rounding out the top-five.
“A lot of it was just what happened in front of me with the 54 and 22, and you just never know what was going to happen there, but I got a really good run off of Turn 2 and just got position and was able to hang on from there. It’s so chaotic, the restarts, with everyone just bumping and banging, but feels great to win here in LA.” Said Hamlin
“It’s a great momentum boost. It doesn’t do much more than that. But I clean off all the trophies every January 1st in the entryway of the house, and now we get to add one pretty quick, so really happy about that.” Continued Hamlin
The NASCAR Cup Series now moves onto Daytona International Speedway on February 18th for the season opening Daytona 500 at 2:30 p.m. on FOX.
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