Logano wins first as rain shortens New Hampshire (cont'd)

He congratulated Logano and said Zipadelli made "a gutsy call" leaving the youngster on track.

"I thought for sure he was going to run out of gas. But we're here on pit road and it's raining hard, so I guess it worked out for him," Gordon said.

Kurt Busch, who won last year's rain-shortened Lenox 301, ran third, followed by Reutimann and Cup points leader Tony Stewart, who saw his advantage shrink to 69 over second-place Gordon.

Ironically, it was Logano's flat tire and a spin on Lap 182 that gave Zipadelli the opportunity to make the winning call. Logano lost a lap during the incident but got it back as the free-pass car after Scott Speed's wreck in Turn 1 on Lap 190. Logano brought his car to pit road for tires and fuel under caution on Lap 193 while the leaders stayed out to retain track position.

"We overcame a lot," Logano said. "We had a left-rear cut down right before we made that last long green-flag run [72 laps before the final caution] and had to overcome that. When that happened, I thought we were done. I thought the day just went bad.

"But we just made the right move at the end. We went for it, and I was just lucky enough to be in the seat."

Logano took the lead when Ryan Newman, trying to stay on track as long as possible with rain threatening, ran out of gas on Lap 264.

Knowing Logano was short on fuel, Gordon tried to run the rookie out of gas during the final six caution laps. Logano would shut off the engine of his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and coast, only to have Gordon pull up beside him to keep pace with the pace car.

"I was just running pace-car speed, and it allowed me to get to the outside of him and make him start his engine and use some fuel, and he didn't like that," Gordon said. "So he moved up so I couldn't get to the outside, so I just went to the inside.

"I didn't want to push him, and I didn't want to back off, because that was our only shot -- for him to run out of fuel."

Stewart, who drove the previous 10 seasons in Gibbs' No. 20 with Zipadelli as his crew chief, had the dominant car in the 2008 race at New Hampshire but was the victim of Busch's good fortune.

"Yeah, I'm happy for Zippy and Joey and all the guys," Stewart said. "Man, you take 'em any way you can get 'em. That's as much a strategy as shocks and springs and everything else. They still had to work to get themselves in that position, so they did a good job."

The race was slowed by 11 caution flags for 47 laps including an eight-car wreck on Lap 175 that took out contenders Martin Truex Jr., Jeff Burton and Brian Vickers.

It appeared that Dale Earnhardt Jr., in third at the time, spun his tires on a restart and Truex, right behind him, slowed and was hit from behind by Kyle Busch, igniting the melee (watch video).

• Note: The battle for the final positions in the 12-driver Chase tightened considerably. Positions 10-14 (Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Juan Montoya, Kasey Kahne and Reutimann, respectively) are covered by a spread of 17 points. Montoya (12th on Sunday) held on to the 12th spot by one point over Kahne, who finished 10th.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.