Joey Logano Outruns Teammate Brad Keselowski To Win At Las Vegas

Joey Logano Outruns Teammate Brad Keselowski To Win At Las Vegas

by March 3, 2019 0 comments

LAS VEGAS – Joey Logano celebrated his first win of the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season after capturing the checkered flag in Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Logano led 86 laps and drove the No. 22 Pennzoil Ford to his 22nd victory in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series after holding off his Team Penske teammate, Brad Keselowski.

“He says race,” Logano said when asked what team owner, Roger Penske, wants in the situation where teammates are battling it out for the win, “and I told everyone from Pennzoil today, they said this race is bigger than the Daytona 500 for them, to win the Pennzoil 400, and I said we’re going to be doing donuts in that infield after the race. We were able to do it. What a great race. You guys enjoy that? Man, what a great race.”

Logano continued and said, “Brad and I were so evenly matched, and the way the draft works, you just can’t drive away. My car got tight there the last five, six laps, and Brad was catching me so quick, and I got stuck behind a lap car, and I was like, oh, man, but man that was so close, and to be able to get it there at the end was a lot of fun. My heart is still running, but what a great team to get back in Victory Lane after last year, to get us back into the Playoffs is a nice feeling, and we can go on and race aggressively towards the Playoffs.”

Keselowski finished in second place on Sunday following a heated battle in the closing laps. Keselowski was unable to get by Logano, and in an avoidance of collecting both he and his teammate in an accident, the two raced hard, but clean, to the finish with only a slight nudge coming out of the final turn.

“I passed Joey with the lap traffic there and caught a break there, and then lap traffic cost me the lead to Joey and he pulled a good slide job, and I tried to pull it back and I was just a touch too nice to him,” Keselowski said. “But sorry it was a really good day, really happy for Team Penske and our team.”

After winning the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch earned a third-place finish on Sunday after overcoming an early speeding penalty.

“If we didn’t have the speeding penalty on pit road, we would have won this race, but the guys gave me a great piece and we were certainly fast there at the end,” Busch said. “We were running some of them leaders down and closing in on them running 31-flats and once I got within the vicinity of them, I just stalled out to 31.40s and couldn’t go any faster in order to gain on them anymore.

Kevin Harvick led 88 laps on his way to a fourth-place finish, while Kurt Busch led 23 laps before finishing fifth.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Aric Almirola, Martin Truex Jr., Chase Elliott, and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-10 in the finishing order.

The 267-lap race went caution-free with not a single incident bringing out the yellow flag. The only breaks in action came for the endings of Stages 1 and 2. The last time that there wasn’t an accident in a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race dates back to Talladega in 2002.

Three races have been completed in the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season. Now the competitors head to ISM Raceway (formerly Phoenix International Raceway) for the TicketGuardian 500. Live coverage of the race will broadcast on FOX and the Motor Racing Network (MRN) on Sunday, March 10 at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: Robert Laberge/Getty Images

No Comments so far

Jump into a conversation

No Comments Yet!

You can be the one to start a conversation.

<