Last night’s NASCAR race at Nashville Superspeedway took a record five overtimes for Joey Logano to finally get his first win of the season.
The two-time cup series champion punched his ticket to the playoffs after gambling on his gas tank to win this historic race. The Ally 400, originally scheduled to be 300 laps, went for 330 laps thanks to the late race chaos.
Denny Hamlin began the race on the pole but it was Christopher Bell who took the lead from him and won stage 1.
Stage 2 saw spins early on from John Hunter Nemechek and Ty Gibbs, before the race was ultimately stopped for rain and lightning in the area at lap 136.
Then, after an hour and 21 minute delay the race resumed with 45 laps left in stage 2.
Christopher Bell came away with the win in stage 2, sweeping both stages in the race. Chase Elliot went for a spin on lap 218 before the leaders took what they thought would be the final pit stop of the race. Then, coming out of the caution on lap 228, Christopher Bell slammed into the outside wall and ultimately ended his day after a dominating performance winning two stages and leading 132 laps.
The race really started to heat up with 20 laps remaining. Ross Chastain held the lead, but Denny Hamlin managed to hunt him down and take over with 6 laps remaining.
The leaders, however, were quickly running out of fuel.
With less than two laps remaining, Hamlin’s worst nightmare came true as Austin Cindric spun out to bring out the caution and force the race into overtime. In the first overtime, at the first turn, Kyle Larson ran his car too low on the inside lane and caught the apron. This caused his car to shoot up the track and take out Chastain, who was running in second at the time. And the second overtime began.
The second overtime saw Daniel Suarez spin through the grass on the restart, forcing a third overtime. And on the third restart, Kyle Larson was on the outside lane of the front row when he ran out of gas before getting to the start/finish line, which caused an accordion effect that ended with Kyle Busch crashing and ending his day.
Then, Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. were running first and second. But running on empty forced the two to pit, basically ending their chances of winning.
After they stopped, Joey Logano took the lead and Chase Briscoe moved into second after drivers in front of him pitted. During the fourth overtime, Logano was seconds away from taking the white flag and ending the race before Josh Berry spun out and brought out the caution.
For the fifth and final overtime of the race, Logano got a great launch to hold onto the lead.
But despite the launch, it didn’t seem like he would have enough gas to finish the race. There was just no way. Yet somehow, he saved just enough to finish after an insane 103 laps since his last pit stop.
Zane Smith and Tyler Reddick came up just short as Logano ran on fumes across the finish line and finally ran out of gas in the beginning of his celebratory burnouts.
This was Logano’s first win since March of 2023 and now gives him a chance to compete for his third NASCAR Cup Series title.
