Posts Tagged ‘Joe Gibbs Racing’

A race that was pretty much in the hands of Joey Logano ended up going to Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch.

Busch passed Greg Biffle in the last mile Saturday at Auto Club Speedway to win the Stater Bros. 300 Nationwide Series race after the dominant Logano had led 130 laps, consistently rejecting competitions all afternoon.

Logano’s dominance for much of the race turned it  into a snoozer, but the final two laps it was a green white checkered finish making it a tight race to the finish.

Logano led going into turn one on the restart, but Biffle got under Lagano and nudged him , making slight contact with Logano and sending him high in turn two putting Logano back to fourth place as Busch and Brad Keselowski also soared past.

On the final lap, coming out of turn four Busch got to the inside of Biffle, side drafting him and slingshoting past Biffle to win the race, Logano got spin by Brad Keselowski coming to the start finish line, Logano wound up in the infield grass.

Busch, only led  four of the 150 laps was on the tail of Logano most of the race, this gives JGR its fifth straight Nationwide win at Auto Club Speedway.

“That’s crazy,” Busch said. “That’s some racing there.”

Not too surprising was Logano’s reaction at the end of the race,not to pleased with the turn one events. He said he was hit by Biffle in the first turn on the final restart. “I realize it’s tight racing, but he could have done it differently,” Logano said. “You keep doing that, and eventually it’s going to come back and bite you.”

Biffle said Logano made a mistake “and spun his tires and couldn’t get going. He tried to come down and block the bottom, but I already had a run and I wasn’t going to give that up.”

Logano led 47 of the first 50 laps and 68 of the first 71 and was rarely challenged at the front until the closing laps.

Logano had a 1.7-second lead over Busch with five laps to go when Brendan Gaughan produced the last caution of the race with a spinout, setting up the wild finish.

Danica Patrick, making her second start in the series, fell to the rear of the field early in the race and was lapped by the leaders on lap 18. She finished 31st.

Speed TV contributed to this report.

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