{"id":31806,"date":"2016-10-24T11:47:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T18:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=31806"},"modified":"2016-10-24T11:47:48","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T18:47:48","slug":"joey-logano-rockets-to-hellmans-500-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/joey-logano-rockets-to-hellmans-500-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Joey Logano Rockets to Hellman\u2019s 500 Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Joey
Joey Logano celebrates in Victory Lane. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey\/NASCAR via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

There was plenty of tension and anxiety running rampant in the pits Sunday afternoon at the Talladega SuperSpeedway for the running of the Hellman\u2019s 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup event, the last race of three in the Chase of 12. Four competitors would see their season\u2019s hopes fade away by sundown.<\/p>\n

That certainly wasn\u2019t the case for race winner Joey Logano and his Penske Racing Ford team, who felt running up front was the only place to be.\u00a0 That strategy paid off late in the race, despite some very difficult situations along the way that Joey had to overcome, needing a little luck along the way.<\/p>\n

His first obstacle was a green flag pit road miscue, dragging his jack the entire circumference of the 2.66-mile superspeedway on lap 40. He was fortunate right at that moment to have Martin Truex, Jr. bring out the yellow flag from the oil of his blown engine, bunching up the field and saving Logano from going a lap down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Joey
Joey Logano, driver of the #22 Shell Pennzoil Ford, drags a jack around the track after an incident on pit road. (Photo by Jerry Markland\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Later, Logano as the leader ended up collecting debris on his nose of his Ford, raising his engine temps to dangerous levels. He was saved by a late race caution to remove the blockage that sent the event into overtime for four extra laps.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s never a layup here at Talladega,” said Logano, winning for the second straight year at Talladega and 16th<\/sup> time of his young career. \u00a0“It\u2019s always close. \u00a0You never get a big lead. \u00a0(Crew chief) Todd (Gordon) made some good adjustments during the race and found some speed in the car, so that was pretty neat to see some of that.<\/p>\n

“We got that track position and just hung onto it. \u00a0I was able to stay on the bottom, trying to run there, keeping everyone in line, and that worked out really well.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Joey
Joey Logano in the pit. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The top five were Logano, Brian Scott (with his career best finish), Denny Hamlin, Kurt Busch and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.\u00a0 It was that jump to third at the finish for Hamlinthat enabled him to continue his Chase push, leaving Austin Dillon out.<\/p>\n

Hamlin and Dillon tied for the final spot in the Round of 8 with 3,078 points each. \u00a0Hamlin won the tiebreaker on the strength of his third-place finish on Sunday as compared to Dillon\u2019s sixth-place finish last weekend in Kansas.<\/p>\n

The eight drivers advancing are Jimmie Johnson, Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, (each sharing a win in the Round of 12), those moving on from points, Kurt Busch +21; Matt Kenseth +10; Kyle Busch +6; Carl Edwards +4 and Hamlin as No. 8 contestant, with all drivers resetting to 4,000 points individually starting next weekend at Martinsville Speedway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Joey
Joey Logano leads Brian Scott and Denny Hamlin. (Photo by Patrick Smith\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

“We needed some things to fall our way if we didn’t win the race,” Hamlin said. He beat Kurt Busch by .006 of a second for the pivotal position.\u00a0 “Today things fell our way.\u00a0 The last lap, we went out and earned it.<\/p>\n

“For me, I really truly believe this is the first really great fortune that we had in the Chase in my 11-year career.\u00a0 Things just happened well for us going out there and we did our jobs.\u00a0 It was very tough to be able to run against guys that had a lot of teammates up front.\u00a0 I knew that was going to be a problem for us all day.\u00a0 But we were able to have just enough there at the end to get past the 41 (Kurt Busch) and get in.”<\/p>\n

Those missing the cut were Austin Dillon (0), Martin Truex, Jr. (-18), rookie candidate, Chase Elliott (-28), and 2012 champ Brad Keselowski (-35) who lost his engine, posting a race leading 90 laps for the day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Joey
Joey Logano poses with the winner’s decal in Victory Lane. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey\/NASCAR via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

With a clean slate, the Chase of 8 starts next weekend at the Martinsville Speedway for the running of the Goody\u2019s Fast Relief 500 on Sunday, Oct. 30, on NBCSN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was plenty of tension and anxiety running rampant in the pits Sunday afternoon at the Talladega SuperSpeedway for the running of the Hellman\u2019s 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup event.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3424,3470],"tags":[4067,547,1529,41,1632],"class_list":["post-31806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-nascar","category-news","tag-2016-nascar-sprint-cup-series","tag-jay-wells","tag-joey-logano","tag-news","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/lead-21.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-8h0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31818,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31806\/revisions\/31818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}