Joey Logano emerged with the victory in Saturday’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, his third win of the 2026 season and first of the Chase, after sneaking into the top spot late in the 500-lap contest.
The three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion led 93 of the race’s 500 laps, but only seven of those came after Lap 130, when the driver of the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse snuck by an intense battle between 23-year-old drivers Ty Gibbs and Carson Hocevar, which got physical.
Once Logano was able to secure the lead, doing so with a bold inside three-wide move, the gap behind him was too large to close, allowing the Middletown, Connecticut-native to drive away, winning his 40th NASCAR Cup Series event by 1.248 seconds.
Logano did an extensive burnout on the frontstretch and climbed out of his car to a chorus of boos.
Come on, Bristol. I hear you down here,” Logano teased post-race. “I had a really good race car. Team Penske put together a great car. We were able to win the first stage there, and you know it’s going to get aggressive at the end and right place, right time.”
With his third victory of the year, Logano moves to third-place in NASCAR Cup Series point standings, just 16 markers behind points leader Kyle Larson heading into three consecutive weeks of mile-and-a-half races at Kansas, Las Vegas, and Charlotte.
“I’ve got a great team. We’ve got a team that knows how to win championships. I thought there for a minute, I was like, okay, I might just finish third or fourth here tonight, but all kind of worked our way up and I was like, well, merry Christmas to me. I got a gift there.”
The noise from the crowd was staggering, but what Logano didn’t know (or maybe he did) was there was a major event happening on pit road behind him with his teammate Ryan Blaney and third-place finisher Carson Hocevar.
Blaney and Hocevar had a run-in in the closing laps of the event, which left the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion upset about a day-ending wreck that significantly hurt his championship chances. So, the driver of the No. 12 went to talk to him and a fight broke out.
“I wasn’t trying to wreck him. It just looked like to me, that I got a run, and kind of went left, and he spun. I spun him,” Hocevar said. “He didn’t even talk. He said like one thing, and then came after me, and I wasn’t going to take it. I got ran into a lot for the win. That was for second, and he wants to fight. I don’t think anyone is left behind me, so they got an old-school Bristol show, here.”
Hocevar finished in the third position after getting beat by Kyle Larson to the start-finish line by 0.005 seconds for the runner-up spot. Christopher Bell finished fourth after a solid afternoon of running inside the top five, with Ty Gibbs rounding out the top-five in the No. 54 M&M’s Toyota Camry XSE, honoring the late Kyle Busch.
Josh Berry was the highest finishing of the non-Chase drivers, again, in sixth.
Bubba Wallace came home in seventh, with Denny Hamlin eighth, William Byron in ninth, despite making contact with the inside wall during an on-track incident late in the going. Ryan Preece rounded out the top 10 for RFK Racing.
Other Chase drivers that finished outside the top-10 included Austin Cindric in 11th, Chris Buescher in 13th, Daniel Suarez in 14th, Tyler Reddick in 18th after spending a lot of the evening running outside the top 25, Chase Elliott in 23rd, Chase Briscoe in 27th after a late-race mechanical issue, and Ryan Blaney 33rd after his late-race wreck with Carson Hocevar.
Leaving Bristol and heading to Kansas Speedway, Kyle Larson has taken over the NASCAR Cup Series points lead, by one point over Denny Hamlin. Joey Logano sits third, 16 points behind, with Christopher Bell in fourth, 17 points back.
The Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway will take place Sunday, September 27 at 3:00 PM ET on USA Sports.
