Auto racing: Joey Logano repeats at Bristol

Helio Castroneves won the pole Saturday at 220.530 miles per hour, a strong push toward yet another drive at his first career championship with two races left in the season. He’s still comfortably in the Chase field, but as he slides down to 15th, he cans still miss the Chase if two drivers outside the top 16 win the next two races. For Harvick, however, it was a big win as it was his 17th top-5 finish, and it allowed him to keep a hefty gap on his Sprint Cup points lead. Rounding out the top five was Denny Hamlin in third, Jimmie Johnson in fourth and Clint Bowyer in fifth.

“We are hitting it at the right time, that’s for sure”, Logano said. Logano said after it was over that he feels like he is hitting his stride. “All in all, he was just one step ahead of me in traffic”.

Upon returning to the track, Busch promptly passed the race leader and got a lucky dog pass during a caution to get back on the lead lap. It was a futile battle, with Logano maintaining the lead and Harvick finishing second.

BAD LUCK:Carl Edwards was leading at Bristol with 148 laps to go when he suddenly had a tire go flat and was forced to pit under the green flag. Logano would lead 176 laps and be a dominant force at the Bristol short track.

It also was Busch’s third win in six Xfinity Series starts this year. Ragan was under Johnson and above Bowyer when Ragan got loose got down into Bowyer and spun, ending up on the inside wall.

Logano celebrated in Victory Lane for the second time in three races, but not from the lack of trying by defending Sprint Cup champion Kevin Harvick, who pushed him to the brink for 63 laps. It was the second DNF of the season for Kenseth, the first coming at Dover in May when he had suspension problems.

“Everybody has just been working their tails off and doing a great job”, said Busch, who has four victories this summer. “We got better there at the end, but we still just didn’t have the speed to run with the front two guys on that last run”, Hamlin said. The TRD (Toyota Racing Development) stuff has been awesome, making great power, been really reliable and things like this just happen sometimes. I feel like we’re right where we need to be, just like we were past year at this point. We both found what works for us I really thought the vehicle away that I was really in the long time.

“I’m not frustrated at all because I’ve been on the other side of this fence, and you’d give everything in the world to finish second every week because it’s not easy”, he said. “It would be cool if they would send you a text or something”. “It broke in the midst of the straightaway – it had that hop and that noise that it makes when you realize you dropped a valve“. Next on the schedule is the Bojangles’ Southern 500, at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina on September 6, followed by the Federated Auto Parts 400, at Virginia’s Richmond global Raceway on September 12.