Joey Logano charges to Nationwide Series win at Dover

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In: Xfinity Series News

 

Joey Logano smashed the glass slipper Saturday at Dover International Speedway.

Charging forward from the seventh position after a restart on Lap 158 of 200, Logano overtook pole-sitter Ryan Truex for the lead on Lap 195 to win the 5-Hour Energy 200 NASCAR Nationwide Series race, leading a 1-2-3 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing.

In winning his fourth Nationwide race in 10 starts this season and the 13th of his career, Logano finished 1.526 seconds ahead of Truex, who was 11 days removed from an emergency appendectomy.

When Logano came to the pits on Lap 152 after spinning Tim Bainey Jr. to cause the sixth and final caution on Lap 151, Truex inherited the lead and appeared headed for a fairy-tale finish until Logano caught him with five laps left.

Brian Scott ran third, followed by Kurt Busch and Justin Allgaier.

The race was not yet 27 laps old when the championship battle turned upside down. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., running second to Logano at the time, lost control of his No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford off Turn 2 and slammed nose-first into the inside wall on the backstretch.

“I just lost it,” Stenhouse said. “I wasn’t up on the wheel and just kind of riding around until that competition caution (scheduled for Lap 40) and just got behind on the steering. “It was driver error, totally my fault.”

For the second straight week, Stenhouse took a major hit in the standings. A broken drive shaft May 26 at Charlotte cost him most of his championship lead. With Saturday’s trouble — even though he returned to the track on lap 94 — Stenhouse finished 32nd and fell from first to second, 12 points behind Richard Childress Racing’s Elliott Sadler, who finished seventh Saturday.

After the competition caution, which ran from Laps 42-45, the race settled into a long green-flag run, with Logano blitzing the field. After a cycle of green-flag stops that ended on Lap 123, there were seven cars left on the lead lap, and Logano had been out front for 120 of the 123 circuits.

But when Timmy Hill spun in close-quarters racing in front of Sam Hornish Jr. on Lap 24, Sadler got a free pass back to the lead lap as the highest scored lapped car.

Two laps after the subsequent restart, Hornish’s Dodge broke loose under Danica Patrick’s Chevrolet. Patrick clobbered the outside wall in a wreck that also collected Brad Sweet. Patrick took her car to the garage and was credited with a 30th-place finish.

 

 

 

 

NASCAR Wire Service
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