Joey Logano, the first reigning Cup champion not to have a top-five finish through the season’s first 10 races, rallied to score an overtime victory Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway in the season’s 11th race.
“The sport changes so quickly,” Logano, who started 27th, told FS1 after the race. “It’s crazy. If you can just ride these roller coasters. Just proud of the team.”
Logano is the ninth different winner in the last nine races at Texas. The victory is the 37th in Logano’s career, tying him with Bobby Isaac for 23rd on the all-time Cup wins list.
Ross Chastain, who started 31st, finished a season-best second. Ryan Blaney overcame a pit road speeding penalty to finish third. Kyle Larson placed fourth. Erik Jones finished a season-best fifth, earning his first top 10 of the year.
The race was slowed by 12 cautions — including seven in the final stage.
Larson led a race-high 90 laps but lost the lead to Michael McDowell on a restart at Lap 244 of the 271-lap race.
“You don’t want to give up the lead on a mile and a half,” Larson told FS1. “It’s hard to get it back. Yeah, Michael just did a good job timing it. I left early the restart before and was going to leave early again then. He just anticipated and left probably right with me or just barely before, and he had (Tyler) Reddick pushing him behind him.”
So, yeah, wish I could go back and do that all over again. Yeah, just bummer, but try to learn from it.
McDowell had moved to the front with the help of a two-tire pit stop at Lap 221.
McDowell’s chances to win ended after Logano passed him on Lap 264 and McDowell wrecked on the next lap after he was passed by Blaney in Turn 2. McDowell finished 26th.
Josh Berry, who won at Las Vegas earlier this season, was leading when he lost control of his car and crashed off Turn 4, bringing out the caution on Lap 126. He finished 32nd.
Among the incidents in the final stage was a six-car crash that brought out the caution on Lap 173 and eliminated AJ Allmendinger, Alex Bowman, Noah Gragson and Bubba Wallace.
Stage 1 winner: Austin Cindric
Stage 2 winner: Kyle Larson
Next: The series races at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, May 11 at Kansas Speedway on FS1.
