Joey Logano takes second straight chase race

As Kenseth sailed off into Turn 1 with Logano on his tail, the No. 20 Dollar General Toyota grew wide in front of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford.

Just as fans and pundits were wondering if the 2015 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup would lack for dramatic moments, we got one at Kansas Speedway, as Joey Logano dumped Matt Kenseth out of the lead and stormed to victory in the Hollywood Casino 400.

Unconcerned about any future reprisals, Logano maintains he raced Kenseth equitably and never with the intent of turning him around. He raced me hard. He raced me hard, and I raced him hard back. And he was trying to do what Logano had done a week earlier.

Kenseth, who was desperate for a win after digging a deep hole with a 42nd-place showing last weekend at Charlotte in the opening race of the Contender Round, took a different view.

But when the two of them hit lapped traffic, Logano ran into Kenseth’s left rear quarter panel, sending him for a spin entering Turn 1.

“I really don’t know what to say, but to thank everyone for these wonderful gifts”, said Mike Dizmang-Espy, an 11-year military veteran who was deployed to Iraq three times during his service. “That auto won the 125 (qualifying race at Daytona), ran third in the (Daytona) 500, won Talladega in May and won Daytona in July”, he said. Strategically, I think it wasn’t the smartest move on his part. He’ll probably sleep good tonight – I hope he enjoys that one. “It’s not what I would have done”. “That’s all I’m going to comment on”.

Kenseth said he wasn’t so sure the two would be chatting anytime soon.

“I won’t talk to Joey”. “I’m real confident in our race cars and our race team”.

The one sport outside of racing which used to crown champions without a playoff was college football. In the big leagues, catching is one thing and passing another. I don’t like to see that anymore than anybody else does.

And if you think that Logano is about to take his foot off of the gas pedal this week at Talladega Superspeedway with a free pass already in his pocket to the next Chase round, you would be wrong.

Rookie Ryan Blaney finished seventh, followed by Carl Edwards, polesitter Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman. Following the first and only attempt at a green-white-checkered finish, the drivers ended up in the same order at the line with Logano besting Hamlin by 0.491-seconds.

Conversely, it was a good day for non-Chasers, despite a hard crash at half distance for Clint Bowyer which he thankfully walked away from. “But right now I look at the way we raced and I say, hey, we raced hard, and that’s what happened”. Even though we’ve moved on to the next round, our goal is still to win that race and try to get a few guys nervous for next week. Kevin Harvick left his pit with the fuel can attached to the vehicle and thus needed to return to pit road to serve a penalty for removing equipment from his pit box. Harvick came across in 16th. After leading the most laps of the race, Matt Kenseth finished 14th. He is one of seven drivers in the remaining dozen who own at least one win at Talladega. He now sits 12th overall in the driver standings and facing the possibility of elimination next week at Talladega. Ryan Newman is only eight points back.

Both drivers are driving to win a race and contend for a championship and at the end of the day each needs to do what puts their vehicle and their team in the best place to be successful. He recognized Kenseth’s block as an overly aggressive maneuver and told NASCAR.com that if Kenseth is going to race him hard, he’s going to race him hard back.