NASCAR Winner Spotlight: Joey Logano holds off Brad Keselowski at Las Vegas

Joey Logano held off Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski to win the NASCAR Cup Series race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the Pennzoil 400.

Very fittingly, a Pennzoil-sponsored car won Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race, the Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube, at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Joey Logano took the checkered flag in his #22 Team Penske Ford after successfully defending a challenge from teammate Brad Keselowski, who won last Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, in the final turn of the final lap of the race.

The 2018 Cup Series champion was dominant throughout the third and final stage of the 267-lap, race the four-turn 1.5-mile (2.414 kilometer) high-banked Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval. He led 86 laps, nearly a third of the race, including the final 24 and 37 of the final 41.

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Logano finished in the top three in both stages, winning stage two before winning the race itself. Sunday’s win is the 22nd of his Cup Series career and his first at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 12 attempts. His win is the second straight win for Team Penske after Keselowski’s victory last Sunday.

With his victory, Logano has locked himself into the 2019 Cup Series playoffs, where he is set to attempt to defend his championship. He earned 58 points in this race (40 for the victory, 10 for the stage two win and eight for the third place finish in stage one), and as a result of it, he moved from fifth to first in the championship standings, where he leads second place Kevin Harvick of Stewart-Haas Racing by six points (133 to 131).

Logano’s victory came at the expense of Las Vegas native Kyle Busch, who was going for the tripleheader sweep at his home race track after winning the Truck Series race there on Friday night and the Xfinity Series race there on Saturday afternoon. Logano and Busch were infamously involved in a pit road fight at the track in March of 2017 after they made contact on the last lap of the race.

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Las Vegas Motor Speedway was the first stop of NASCAR’s annual “Western Swing”. Next weekend, Joey Logano and the rest of the Cup Series field will travel to neighboring Arizona for the TicketGuardian 500 at ISM Raceway in Avondale. This 312-lap race is scheduled to take place on Sunday, March 10, and live coverage of the event is set to begin at 3:30 p.m. ET on Fox. Logano won the race at the track in November of 2016.

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