Long gone: Joey Logano leads every lap en route to XFINITY win
Joey Logano dominated Saturday's NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway, leading every lap up to score his second victory of the season for Team Penske.
The driver of the No. 22 Ford was in a league of his own throughout the entire event, never giving up the top spot.
"I've never led every single lap in a race before," Logano said in Victory Lane. "What a fast Discount Tire Ford. Gosh this is fun. This is amazing. You're just waiting for something to go wrong. It's such a fast car. All those late cautions and all that stuff, you're like, ‘Where am I going to blow this thing?' Those are the ones you're just worried all race. What a fast car … perfect day."
In his impressive showing, Logano became the only driver to lead every lap during an XFINITY Series race at Bristol. In addition, Logano’s 300 laps led were the most of any driver in series history, topping Sam Ard’s 276 laps led at South Boston Speedway in 1984.
Logano also became the first driver to lead every single lap since Kyle Busch accomplished the feat at Richmond International Raceway in 2014, leading all 250 laps.
Rookie Daniel Suarez was impressive all race and finished the day in the second spot. The career-best finish for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was not easy, as he had to make a big save down the backstretch nearly halfway through the race.
Making his XFINITY Series debut at Bristol, Suarez earned his best career finish in eight tries.
"This is great," Suarez said over the radio after the race. "Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. Thank you."
The Monterrey, Mexico native struggled to find the words to describe his successful day at the track known as the "World’s Fastest Half-Mile."
"I just can't believe it. I can't explain to you in words right now what I'm feeling in Spanish or English," he said. "This is unbelievable, this feeling. We work hard and sometimes it's hard like last weekend in Texas – we were strong and hit the wall and finished 18th. Today we were fast all day long and we ended up in the second spot so that's great."
The 23-year-old admitted once he moved into second behind Logano, he thought he might actually have a shot at the victory.
"At one point in that 40-lap run I was thinking, 'Man, maybe I can take it.' I just started thinking about the big picture and it looked like at one point of that run that maybe for 20 laps or after 10 laps, we were a little bit faster than him (Logano)," said Suarez. "Later in the run we started getting a little too tight in the center so we killed a little of the momentum of the corner and it looked like he kept the same speed. Maybe he wasn't super faster than us, but he was a little bit faster. Really he had a lot of experience and he was able to pass traffic a little faster and with more confidence than me and in that point he made a good gap between us."
Roush Fenway Racing's Chris Buescher finished third after a hard-fought day battling in the top five for much of the race.
"That was a really fast racecar, that was by far the best we've ever been here," said Buescher. "We just needed a little bit. It was just so hard to pass. That high side, you just get up there and you can't do much on the bottom. We were kind of stuck there at the end."
Pole sitter Erik Jones finished fourth, while Ty Dillon, Chase Elliott, Kevin Harvick, Brian Scott, Brendan Gaughan and Elliott Sadler rounded out the top 10.
In the opening stages of the race it appeared Logano's biggest competition was going to be Harvick. Starting from the sixth spot, Harvick worked his way through the top five into second quickly, but could never get around Logano for the top spot.
However, Harvick was caught speeding on pit road under the fourth caution of the day on Lap 174 and was sent to the tail end of the longest line to restart. Working through traffic, Harvick struggled to get back to the front and took advantage of a late caution to pit and work his way back to the seventh spot when the checkered flag flew.
Championship contender Regan Smith lost power on his No. 7 JR Motorsports Chevrolet and was forced behind the wall for a significant portion of the race. When Logano took the checkered flag, Smith was 30th, 48 laps down.
The race was red-flagged once when J.J. Yeley spun down the backstretch and made contact with the wall entering Turn 3. The contact cause significant damage to Yeley's No. 28 Toyota and the front splitter of the car became lodged in the SAFER barrier.
Saturday's race was slowed eight times for 48 caution laps and featured one lead change -- when Logano took the lead from Jones on the initial start.
The NASCAR XFINITY Series returns to action next week at Richmond International Raceway with the ToyotaCare 250.
VIDEO: J.J. Yeley brings out the red flag in XFINITY Series race at Bristol
