Go to content Go to navigation Go to recent PR reports Go to search

Surprise! Joey Logano Beats Rain, Misfortune, For First NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Win

Friday July 3, 2009

 

Raybestos® Rookie Joey Logano rallied from a lap down and stretched his fuel mileage to perfection to win the rain shortened LENOX Industrial Tools 301 Sunday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Cars using WIX Filters have now won eight of the 17 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races this season in addition to the Budweiser Shootout and Sprint All-Star Race.
Logano scored his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory in just his 20th start and his first in two starts at New Hampshire. He became the first Raybestos Rookie to win in 71 races, dating back to Juan Pablo Montoya’s victory at Infineon (Sonoma, Calif.) Raceway in 2007. He joined Ryan Newman (2002) as the only Raybestos Rookies to win in 29 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at New Hampshire.

Logano struggled during the first half of the race and his chance for a good finish appeared to dissolve just past the halfway point of the race. He spun in Turn 4 on lap 184 of the scheduled 301-lap event, bringing out the ninth caution of the race. His made several pit stops for repairs during the caution for repairs to his car and lost one lap to the leaders in the exchange.

But Logano quickly rallied back. Scott Speed crashed in Turn 1 on lap 191 and Logano received the free pass back onto the lead lap. From there, he stretched his fuel mileage to perfection. Logano took the lead on lap 264 as the last car on the lead lap that hadn’t made a scheduled pit stop. Five laps later the 11th and final caution of the race waved for rain, which eventually forced NASCAR officials to stop the race on lap 273. Shortly after the cars were stopped on pit road the precipitation intensified and NASCAR officials could not dry the track, giving Logano the win.

The victory was extra-special for Logano, a native of Middletown, Connecticut, who grew up attending races at the 1.058-mile speedway.

“This is so special,” Logano said. “I think your first win no matter where it’s at is huge. Obviously it’s not the way you want to win your first race, in the rain, but 20 years down the road when you look in the record books, no one will know the difference. I’ll take them any way I can. This is my home track and where I watched my first Cup race. A lot of the guys at Joe Gibbs Racing are from the northeast so it’s cool to get a win here.”

Zipadelli said that to have a chance to win first you must get in position to score the victory.

“Half of this sport is about putting yourself in position to have a chance to win on Sunday afternoon, and you know, that’s what we did today and everything went our way,” Zipadelli said. “It’s nothing more than that. We were lucky, but we put ourselves in position because we were behind. Because we did have the problems, it allowed us to pit, top off with fuel and do some of the things that the guys up front that were guarding their track position, which is pretty normal here. You can almost run this race like a road course, unless you were in the situation that we were in, and we took advantage of it, and last year, we were in the complete opposite. We should have won this race. We dominated most of the second half, and it rained with 30 or so to go and we had to pit for fuel and today we got it back. It was fun.”

Logano became the youngest winner in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series history at 19 years, one month and four days. He won in just his second start at New Hampshire and led the race just once, covering the final 10 laps. Logano leads Scott Speed by 31 points (199-168) in the overall Raybestos® Rookie standings.

Logano averaged 97.497 mph in a race that took 2 hours, 57 minutes and 45 seconds to complete. There were 21 lead changes among 14 drivers and the event was slowed by 11 cautions for 47 laps.

Do you want the chance to win a free Frontstretch T-Shirt, and are you really good at talking about NASCAR? Well, we have the perfect opportunity for you. Our staff will be giving away a free T-Shirt to the reader who makes the best post in our Frontstretch Forum between now and the end of the season. So, what makes a good post? It’s pretty hard to impress us, but here are some things we are looking for:

Does your post spark passionate reactions from other readers? Are you commenting on meaningful NASCAR-related events? Do your posts have substance? In other words, “Dale Jr. is the best driver ever” or “Danica Patrick is hot” will not cut it.

So go to the Frontstretch Forums, post early, post often, and post well! We’ll announce the winner following the final race of the season at Homestead.

This report was provided by an outside PR source and posted by Kim DeHaven.

 

©2000 - 2008 Kim DeHaven and Frontstetch.com. Thanks for visiting the Frontstretch!