Joey Logano outduelled former Penske teammate and two-time Atlanta winner Brad Keselowski in the final laps of the Ambetter Health 400 on Sunday, with a push from Christopher Bell down the backstretch helping Logano clear the pack to win for the first time at Atlanta in the Cup Series.

• Race summary
• Rest of race recap
• Full race results
• Points standings 

It was a dominant display from Logano, having nabbed the pole from Penske teammate Austin Cindric by 0.006 of a second on Saturday, and going on to lead the most laps in Sunday’s race, leading 140 of the 260 laps, and also winning stage one before taking the chequers.

The reigning Cup Series champion said: “Yeah, first off so special to win Atlanta for me. So many memories of me and my dad racing right here on the quarter mile. This is the full circle for us. So many memories gritting over there with the Legends car, racing, having a big time. Dreaming of going straight at the quarter mile and going onto the big track. That was always the dream to do it. To finally win here means so much to me here personally, but the team.”

The track has deep family ties for Logano, having lived at one of the condo’s at the race track for four years with his family whilst working his way through the racing ranks.

Logano and his Team Penske teammates executed a strong race plan all day long. After the trio qualified one-two-three for the race with Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney qualifying second and third respectively, they helped Logano lead from the off. They stayed together for most of the race including in the final twenty laps where they persisted on the bottom lane, not allowing Brad Keselowski and the top lane to run away with the race.

With six laps to go it appeared all momentum and hope for Logano and Team Penske had been lost but a reenergized bottom lane put Logano back in contention.

On the final lap, Corey Lajoie bump-drafted Logano into turn one propelling Logano to lead the top lane and race side-by-side with Keselowski before Bell bumped him down the backstretch and into the lead.

Logano said: “The Auto Trader Mustang; this thing was an animal. Very, very fast.”

Runner-up Brad Keselowski furthered a dominant Ford display, with Ford having taken the top eight spots in qualifying, a feat that Ford hadn’t reached since 1965.

Keselowski looked in control of the race until he could no longer halt the momentum of Logano and raced cleanly to the chequered flag. Keselowski led the second most laps with 47.

Keselowski said: “The coolest thing about this race is two veterans showed you can run a race here side by side, bump-drafting, and not wreck the field. It can happen if you race respectfully. I thought everybody did a great job.”

Corey LaJoie had a career best fourth place finish after running inside the top 15 for the majority of the race.

Rest of race recap 

Joey Logano and Austin Cindric led the field to green for the third Atlanta race since the 2021 repave where the banking was raised to 28 degrees in both corners, as well narrowing the corners, turning the track into a downsized Daytona superspeedway with the cars using the same race package used for Daytona and Talladega.

Logano led the first 10 laps before a caution came out for an out of control Bubba Wallace when he got loose on the outside next to Kyle Busch coming off turn two, before spinning across the track into the wall. Wallace was able to continue the race after repairs but would finish 27th five laps down.

Early on in stage one saw Kevin Harvick lead the bottom lane, but was not able to take the lead away from Logano for long. The NASCAR veteran was competing in his final Spring Atlanta race before retirement, the race of which he won in just his third Cup start 22 years ago, driving for Richard Childress, only three weeks after Childress and the NASCAR world suffered the loss of Dale Earnhardt Sr. 

It was single file for the second half of stage one with Logano comfortably taking the stage win.

Stage two briefly saw a six-car breakaway at the front, midway through the fuel run in Logano, Kyle Busch, Blaney, Keselowski, Chris Buescher, and Cindric, before the rest of the pack came back to them.

Green flag pit stops just after 70 laps into stage two saw Ryan Blaney who had been running second behind Logano receive a speeding penalty for driving too fast on the apron in turn four in what is now part of pit entry, after NASCAR doubled the length of pit road entry, after the drivers had voiced safety concerns of having no runoff for pitting under green with the new configuration.

After serving the drive-through penalty, Blaney ended up being three cars in front of Logano trying to prevent his No. 12 BodyArmor SportWater Ford going two laps down before the stage break.

Blaney held on, with Cindric pinching the stage two win coming off turn four. Blaney would get the free pass later in the final stage.

The final stage saw both lanes in use with Aric Almirola, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Denny Hamlin, and Harvick all taking turns to lead.

Disaster struck for Harvick when on lap 190, as he was sent around after Ross Chastain pushed air onto his rear bumper aggressively around the corner in turns one and two until Harvick’s car squirrelly lost control causing carnage for the field behind to avoid.

Buescher, Josh Berry, Daniel Suarez, Harrison Burton and BJ McLeod all got collected up in the mayhem.

 

Aric Almirola led the field back to green but on lap 209, on 72 lap old tyres, he blew a tyre in front of the pack, taking out Kyle Larson who was running second. Almirola had prior to the restart, gained 17 spots on pit road after taking fuel only under the caution.

The final 40 laps saw a duel between Logano and Keselowski, swapping the lead, before the duel intensified further with 13 laps to go.

Logano had help in his Penske teammates on the bottom, while the three Toyota’s in Tyler Reddick, Christopher Bell, and Denny Hamlin raced on the top, with Keselowski methodically blocking both lanes with help from his spotter TJ Majors.

Logano outduelled Keselowski on the final lap with help from LaJoie and Bell sending the Connecticut driver to victory lane at Atlanta for the first time in the Cup Series.

The next race of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season is the 68-lap road-course race around Circuit of The Americas (COTA).

It’s a star-studded lineup for COTA’s Cup race with F1 champions Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen as well seven-time Cup Series champion as well as 2017 IMSA Champion Jordan Taylor all competing in the first road-course race of the season.

The race starts at 3:30pm ET.

Featured Image: Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Autotrader Ford, celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway (Photo by Jonathan Bachman | Getty Images)

Full race results 

1. Joey Logano
2. Brad Keselowski
3. Christopher Bell
4. Corey LaJoie
5. Tyler Reddick
6. Denny Hamlin
7. Ryan Blaney
8. Erik Jones
9. Ty Gibbs
10. Kyle Busch
11. Austin Cindric
12. Noah Gragson
13. Ross Chastain
14. Alex Bowman
15. Todd Gilliland
16. AJ Allmendinger
17. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
18. Josh Berry
19. Martin Truex Jr.
20. Austin Dillon
21. Michael McDowell
22. Justin Haley
23. Ty Dillon
24. Chase Briscoe
25. Cody Ware
26. JJ Yeley
27. Bubba Wallace
28. Ryan Preece
29. Daniel Suarez
30. Aric Almirola
31. Kyle Larson
32. William Byron
33. Kevin Harvick
34. Harrison Burton
35. Chris Buescher
36. BJ McLeod

Stage one 

1. Joey Logano
2. Austin Cindric
3. Brad Keselowski
4. Ryan Blaney
5. Denny Hamlin
6. Christopher Bell
7. Kyle Busch
8. Chris Buescher
9. Daniel Suarez
10. Martin Truex Jr.

Stage two

1. Austin Cindric
2. Joey Logano
3. Alex Bowman
4. Tyler Reddick
5. William Byron
6. Chris Buescher
7. Martin Truex Jr.
8. Denny Hamlin
9. Brad Keselowski
10. Corey LaJoie

Points standings after 5 of 36 races

1. Joey Logano* – 177
2. Christopher Bell – 176
3. Ross Chastain – 172
4. Ryan Blaney – 161
5. Brad Keselowski – 160
6. Kevin Harvick – `155
7. Kyle Busch* – 153
8. Martin Truex Jr. – 145
9. Denny Hamlin – 140
10. Daniel Suarez – 129
11. Austin Cindric – 126
12. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.* – 124
13. Chris Buescher – 122
14. Corey LaJoie – 113
15. Tyler Reddick – 111
16. Bubba Wallace – 102
    

    ---

17. AJ Allmendinger – 92
18. Michael McDowell – 92
19. Ty Gibbs – 90
20. Alex Bowman – 85
21. Erik Jones – 82
22. Austin Dillon – 80
23. Chase Briscoe – 72
24. Noah Gragson – 68
25. Todd Gilliland – 68
26. Ryan Preece – 63
27. Aric Almirola – 63
28. William Byron* – 55
29. Harrison Burton – 51
30. Cody Ware – 50
31. Chase Elliott – 49
32. Kyle Larson – 43
33. Ty Dillon – 31
34. BJ McLeod – 27
35. Travis Pastrana – 26
36. Jimmie Johnson – 10