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KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Joey Logano snatched victory, and a chance at this year’s championship, from the grasp of Matt Kenseth with four laps remaining in Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway when contact between the two sent Kenseth’s yellow No. 20 Toyota spinning sideways and Logano’s No. 22 Ford roaring away with the lead.
Kenseth had controlled much of the 269-lap race, leading 153 laps around the 1.5-mile track. But after a caution period for his Turn 1 spin and a green-white-checkered finish, the 2003 NASCAR premier series champion found himself 14th in the final rundown.
Logano held on for the victory, his second straight in the Contender Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and his fifth of the season.
“It was really cut and dry,” Kenseth, 43, said after exiting his car on pit road. “He picked my rear tires off the ground and wrecked me, so there’s no debate about that one.”
A disastrous finish a week earlier at Charlotte Motor Speedway had left Kenseth 12th in the Chase standings, and likely needing a victory at Kansas or next weekend’s race at Talladega Superspeedway to advance and keep his title hopes alive.
And for much of Sunday’s race, it seemed as if the win would be his at Kansas. It took him only 28 laps to go from his 11th-place starting position to first, passing pole-sitter Brad Keselowski for the top spot. Although he dropped back occasionally, Kenseth never fell outside the top 10 until the incident in the closing laps of the race.
He wasn’t surprised at the late-race contact, he said afterward, but was disappointed.
“I’ve probably been one of his biggest supporters,” Kenseth said of Logano. “It was an awkward thing, obviously, taking his ride and I was excited for him when he started winning at (Team) Penske and when he got that ride.”
Kenseth, who replaced Logano at Joe Gibbs Racing at the end of the 2013 season, said he “even found him today and congratulated him about racing against each other for a championship.”
There were no congratulations offered afterward.
“I was very disappointed that he would do that,” Kenseth said. “… Yeah, I was running the lane he wanted to run in, but my goodness isn’t this racing? Strategically, I think it wasn’t the smartest move on his part. He’ll probably sleep good tonight; I hope he enjoys that one. It’s not what I would have done, but he had a decision to make and that’s the one he made.”
The result kept Kenseth 12th in the Chase standings with only Talladega remaining to determine the eight teams that will advance to the three-race Eliminator Round. He trails eighth-place Martin Truex Jr. (Furniture Row Racing) by 35 points.
Jason Ratcliff, Kenseth’s crew chief said he knew Logano would be tough to hold off, because “the 22 car was pretty good all day, at least for the first 15 or 20 laps of a run.
“There was some good racing going there, putting on a good show; I thought it was really clean right up to that point,” Ratcliff said. “I didn’t expect that out of Joey, especially knowing that he won last week and really right now he’s just hanging out having fun. … Really I don’t expect that out of anybody. But I expect Joey to be smarter than that. I thought that was just uncalled for. It didn’t need to happen. Joey’s a good driver.”
Logano guaranteed himself a spot in the Eliminator Round with his win last week at CMS. Other victories this season have come at Daytona, Watkins Glen and Bristol.
“It’s hard racing,” Logano, 25, said of the contact. “With 15 to go I got to the outside of him down the backstretch, and I had to lift not to wreck both of us at that point, and then kind of got put in the same situation down the frontstretch.
“Then we just happened to go in the same corner and we both went for the same piece of real estate. I wanted that middle lane and so did he, and we collided there.
“So good hard racing, you know. We ran each other hard. He ran me hard; I ran him hard back. That’s just the type of driver I am, the type of racer I’m going to be, and it just comes to that point sometimes to — it’s unfortunate that those things happen, you know … it doesn’t take anything away from our win today.”
Team owner Roger Penske said he saw his driver “get squeezed” by Kenseth on a couple of occasions as the two battled for the top spot.
Logano “turned down,” he said “to take the lower lane, and there was another car up there, a slower car … and then Kenseth came down.
“Unfortunately they got together. I don’t like to see that any more than anybody else does. It’s one of those racing accidents that are real tough when it’s in this kind of situation.
“But there was no question that Kenseth was doing everything he could to keep Joey from going by.”
Todd Gordon, Logano’s crew chief, said it was nothing more than “two guys racing their butts off.”
“You know, Joey had a couple runs at Matt and Matt blocked both of them and unfortunately got us in the wall into Turn 1 and there’s more contact that prevails beyond the contact to the wall,” he said. “That’s just hard racing, two guys that want to win, and both have — you know, they’re both … very competitive race car drivers and they do a lot of similar things, and neither one of them was going to give there, and obviously it came out the way it did.”
Logano made it all the way to the Championship Round a year ago, only to finish fourth in the four-team battle. Kenseth made it as far as the third round before falling by the wayside.
Now, just one race remains for the veteran and his team to keep their title hopes alive.
“Matt drove a great race,” Ratcliff said. “He got aggressive when he needed to. He knew that winning today could mean everything as far as advancing and winning the championship. He did exactly what he needed to do and what every other driver out there would have done and I’m really proud of him and the guys on pit road.
“We’ve got one more race with Talladega … anything can happen there.”
