NASCAR Nationwide Series
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NNS: Logano Soars At Bristol
Joey Logano scores his first Nationwide victory at BMS…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted August 24, 2012   Bristol, TN
Joey Logano isn’t running the full Nationwide Series schedule, but he’s whacking the series regulars when he’s on track with them.

Logano outraced Kevin Harvick in the late stages and then held on in a two-lap dash to the finish to win Friday’s Food City 250 Nationwide race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The victory is Logano’s sixth of the Nationwide season but his first career win at Bristol.

“We’ve been so close to winning here,” Logano said. “It feels so good to get here in victory lane. It’s Bristol – one of the top three or four race tracks to win at.”

The race was the first Nationwide event on the track’s “new” surface. The main racing groove seemed to be tightened by the grinding of the area near the outside walls, and several accidents occurred in the early going. The race ended with nine cautions, the most this season in the series.

Following Logano at the finish were Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Kyle Busch, Austin Dillon and point leader Elliott Sadler, who now is 19 points ahead of Stenhouse in second.

Stenhouse bumped Sadler on the white-flag lap to take second and drop Sadler to fifth. Stenhouse walked over to Sadler’s car after the race to apologize. Sadler accepted but said he would race Stenhouse differently in the future as they compete for the series championship.

Harvick had one of the night’s most potent cars, but he lost the lead to Logano late in the race and then lost a lap on pit road when he ran out of fuel. Harvick led 98 of the 250 laps. He finished 15th.

Inside 50 laps to go, Harvick and Logano battled neck and neck, with Logano trying to pass Harvick on the inside for lap after lap before he finally pushed past – with the help of some lapped traffic – with 34 laps remaining.

The field was bunched for a restart with 15 laps to go after John Wes Townley slammed the wall to prompt a caution.

Logano, Stenhouse and Sadler led the way at the restart, and the race had been under green only a few moments when Trevor Bayne and Dillon crashed, a wreck that irritated Bayne and led him to tap Dillon’s bumper several times during the caution. They were racing for fifth position. Bayne confronted Dillon on pit road after the race, and the discussion reached an uncomfortable level before Richard Childress, Dillon’s grandfather and team owner, stepped in.

The race’s first incident found Dillon and Justin Allgaier tangling, and Allgaier got the worst of the tussle. He slapped the outside wall and damaged the rear end of his car.

The night’s second caution appeared when Brad Keselowski spun while racing with Brian Scott and a lapped car.

Scott later spun out when his car was tapped in the rear by Busch.

Danica Patrick, who had problems in qualifying and started the race 34th, was nailed for speeding on pit road but rallied to finish ninth, her second top-10 run of the year.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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