Joey Logano wins on the dirt at Bristol (3-29-21)
By: Becca Cottingham
Headline Photo Courtesy: Team Penske Twitter Page
We head to the dirt at Bristol and after a rainout, we get to racing on Monday. Denny Hamlin leads us to green after Kyle Larson had to move to the back. Cars are already covered in mud on the front and this can cause cars to overheat. Kyle Busch quickly passed Denny Hamlin. Martin Truex Jr. then moves to the front but is seeing temperatures rise on his car. Kyle Busch has already had to pit due to overheating. We see several places where drivers are going three-wide on the track. They have red-flagged the race due to an on-track wreck involving at least four drivers. Aric Almirola and Corey LaJoie are two of the four drivers involved. We get back to action and it does not take long before we have another caution. This will lead us to the first of two competition cautions for the race. Drivers got back to racing and a third wreck happened. The third wreck involved several more drivers such as Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell two big names for today’s race. Things will settle down caution-wise after the competition caution. Martin Truex Jr will retain the lead for the rest of stage one.
We start stage two and Martin Truex Jr continues to show the way. The even bigger news behind that is Daniel Suarez having one of his best races with little to no dirt track. Daniel Suarez caught Martin Truex Jr and did a small bump and run. This allowed him enough room to get around Martin Truex Jr. Martin was quickly then passed by William Byron. Daniel Suarez makes contact with a lap down Kyle Larson. Which they should be able to fix in the competition caution. We get back to racing and a dust bowl happens. Drivers could not see anything and an accident happens involving ten different drivers. The dust is causing multiple issues for drivers. Joey Logano got a good look and almost passed Daniel Suarez but was not able to complete the pass. This was not the same after caution laps for a spin for Cody Ware. Joey Logano got a better start and made it around Daniel Suarez to earn the stage two win.
Joey Logano brings us back to the green flag for the final stage. We have fifty laps of dirt racing left for the first race in fifty years. The final stage went caution-free until the end of the race. We get a caution with four to go and sends us into overtime. Joey Logano got another great restart as Denny Hamlin made his way to the top of the track. However, either his car or the track was not ready for him to go that high. Joey Logano gets the unofficial win on the Bristol race on dirt.
