Joey Logano made his way to the front of the field at the right time to win the 57th Daytona 500 Sunday (2/22) in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series.
The first points race of the 2015 Sprint Cup season appears to indicate that we could be in for a very exciting year in NASCAR. There was a lot of close racing and passing on the superspeedway of Daytona International Speedway. That makes me think that on the smaller tracks the action will even be more exciting.
There were 12 different drivers that exchanged the lead in Daytona 27 times throughout the race. However, there were four drivers that showed all afternoon that they had the speed and handling to likely be the cars to beat.
Jeff Gordon started from the pole in his last Daytona 500 and led the most laps for the day at 87 laps led. Jimmie Johnson also looked strong with Jeff early on in the race as he led a total of 39 laps through the afternoon.
While Dale Earnhardt Jr. did not take the lead of the race until more than half-way through the 200 lap contest, he was in the top few cars on the track all afternoon. Dale Jr. pulled the line of cars around the track for 32 laps led in the afternoon.
Joey Logano made his way to the front of the field a handful of times through the afternoon. However, the most important time he grabbed the lead was the sixth time on lap 191. With just nine laps in the scheduled distance left the young driver got out front for his chance to win. Before he could take the white flag for the final lap an accident on the front stretch caused the red flag to be displayed. That meant the first race of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season would go into overtime, a green-white-checkered finish.
When the race was restarted, Joey was able to hold off the charges of Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. to hold the lead under the white flag. While Kevin and Dale Jr. were setting up to make whatever move to try and win the race through the final two turns on the last lap, a wreck on the backstretch brought out the yellow flag allowing Joey to cruise under the yellow and checkered flag to win his first Daytona 500 of his career.
Kevin finished in second place with Dale Jr. holding on to the third place finish. Denny Hamlin came across in fourth place with Jimmie Johnson rounding out the top five. See the complete race results for the Daytona 500 here.
You can watch video highlights of the 2015 Daytona 500 below.
By winning, Joey has all but locked himself in the 2015 Chase Grid and takes the number one spot in the NASCAR Sprint Cup point standings. Since this is the first race of the season the top five in points is a reflection of the top five finishers in the race with Kevin Harvick in second, Dale Earnhardt Jr. third, Denny Hamlin fourth and Jimmie Johnson fifth. See the complete NASCAR Sprint Cup point standings here.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup series heads from the two-and-a-half mile superspeedway of Daytona to the mile-and-a-half Atlanta Motor Speedway for the Folds Of Honor Quicktrip 500 Sunday, March 1st.
By: Buck Stevens
(Feature photo courtesy of NASCARmedia.com/305373Jonathan Ferrey/NASCAR via Getty Images)
