NASCAR made history on Monday afternoon in its first Cup Series race on a dirt surface in 50 years, with Joey Logano making the trip to victory lane after the 250 lap main event.
The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford beat out Denny Hamlin and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in a final, overtime restart.
Logano becomes the seventh different winner the series has had in its first seven races of the 2021 season.
There was a thought that Hamlin could give Logano a run during the two-lap shootout, but NASCAR had stopped doing double-file restarts with just over 50 laps to go because of the dust being produced by the track.
“It’s tough to say,” Hamlin said. “If I’m beside him, I have a better chance to make a move on him than if I was beside him. I was going to make a move on him either on the high side or the low side. I chose high and I shouldn’t have.”
Logano took the lead when he got around a young gun in both driver and team in Trackhouse Racing’s Daniel Suarez.
The driver of the 99 lead some laps during Stage 2 in one of his first dirt races of his career.
During the final stage break, NASCAR prepped the track to try and limit the dust being produced by the track. That changed the whole race for Suarez.
“The race track changed completely,” Suarez said. “They did a lot of things to that race track where some cars came to the (driver) and others (went away). Mine went away. I lost that grip and I just couldn’t do much about it.”
Suarez attributed it to the learning curve, but his team will take a fourth-place finish.
Ryan Newman rounded out the top five, bringing home his best finish since the 2019 season after going without one in 2020.
While it was an unexpectedly solid day for some, the dirt ringers were basically shutout across the field.
Chris Windom and Shane Golobic were involved in early wrecks and taken out of contention before they could really get moving.
Mike Marlar never had the speed to compete with the field.
Even the normal dirt guys in Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson had their days ruined by a mistake – albeit that one being by Bell.
The NASCAR Cup Series will take the upcoming weekend off before returning to the track at Martinsville for a Saturday show on April 10.
NASCAR Cup Series Results
Food City Dirt Race
1. Joey Logano
2. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
3. Denny Hamlin
4. Daniel Suarez
5. Ryan Newman
6. William Byron
7. Tyler Reddick
8. Ryan Blaney
9. Erik Jones
10. Chase Elliott
11. Brad Keselowski
12. Michael McDowell
13. Matt DiBenedetto
14. Chris Buescher
15. Kevin Harvick
16. Kurt Busch
17. Kyle Busch
18. Ryan Preece
19. Martin Truex Jr.
20. Chase Briscoe
21. Austin Dillon
22. Alex Bowman
23. Stewart Friesen
24. Cole Custer
25. Quin Houff
26. Ty Dillon
27. Bubba Wallace
28. JJ Yeley
29. Kyle Larson
30. Josh Bilicki
31. Mike Marlar
32. Cody Ware
33. Chris Windom
34. Christopher Bell
35. Ross Chastain
36. Aric Almirola
37. Shane Golobic
38. Corey LaJoie
39. Anthony Alfredo
