The NASCAR Cup Series‘ March schedule continued Sunday with Joey Logano coming out victorious in a thriller at the Ambetter Health 400, and we had you covered with all the action from start to finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway!
The 260-lap race covered 400 miles and was made up of one 60-lap opening stage, followed by two 100-lap stages.
Sunday’s victory marked Logano’s first win of the 2023 Cup season.
Here are the top moments from Hampton, Georgia!
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Green!
Actor Jesse Metcalfe and a handful of the 2022 national champion Georgia Bulldogs gave the command for drivers to start their engines. Just like that, things got underway in Georgia!
Early trouble
It was a tough start for No. 23, as Bubba Wallace ran into trouble on the backstretch of Turn 2 early, drawing the first caution of the day at just Lap 10.
The first restart of the day came at Lap 16, and things were back to green.
Not so fast
Kyle Larson jumped out of line and tried to make a big move, but things didn’t go as planned.
Instead, he ended up going backward, dropping all the way to 12th with his risky move.
Stage 1 in the books
Logano took the first stage win of the day, followed by Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney, Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin rounding out the top five.
Elsewhere, Kyle Busch, who started in 17th place, won the race off pit road for the lead. Keselowski made it out second, while Logano dropped back to fifth. The green flag was back out at Lap 68.
Make way!
Blaney was the early leader in the second stage …
… but that didn’t last long, as Logano regained the lead after a few moments.
Two down, one to go!
Cindric took Stage 2, followed by Logano, Alex Bowman, Tyler Reddick and William Byron rounding out the top five.
Follow the leader
It was Ricky Stenhouse Jr. who took the early lead at the start of the third and final stage.
Crash!
Kevin Harvick got spun out of the lead in front of the rest of the field and caused a huge wreck after Ross Chastain closed in on Harvick from the inside line.
Kevin Harvick gets spun and wrecks at the Ambetter Health 400
Chris Buescher, BJ McLeod, Harrison Burton, defending champion Byron and others were involved, ending their race early.
Not how he drew it up
After all that, Aric Almirola retook the lead and the green flag was back out with 61 laps to go, but both were short-lived.
Almirola blew a right rear tire, which had over 70 laps on them at the time, in front of the field, absolutely destroying Larson’s car in the process. Daniel Suárez, Justin Haley and Reddick were also caught up in the crash, but only Suárez had his day ended prematurely because of it.
Race leader Aric Almirola spun out and wrecks at the Ambetter Health 400
Kyle Larson discusses costly wreck at the Ambetter Health 400
Teamwork makes the dream work
Logano took the lead with help from Blaney with 33 laps to go.
Shortly after that, Logano found himself racing side-by-side with Keselowski for the lead once again. With 20 laps remaining, Keselowski was out front trying to hold off Logano and Reddick from overtaking him.
Winner!
In the end, Logano got a huge shove from Corey LaJoie that then-leader Keselowski wasn’t able to block in the race’s final moments, taking the lead midway down the backstretch and keeping it the rest of the way to secure the win.
Logano was followed by Keselowski, Christopher Bell, LaJoie, Reddick, Hamlin, Blaney, Erik Jones, Ty Gibbs and Busch to round out the top-10 finishers in Sunday’s race.
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