Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano have advanced to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chase Round of 12, keeping Ford’s NASCAR championship hopes alive for at least another three races.
Both Ford drivers posted top 10 finished in Sunday’s Citizen Solider 400 from Dover to move on from the Round of 16, with Keselowski turning up fourth and Logano coming home sixth. Rookie Chris Buescher, who was the only other Ford driver to make it into the Chase apart from the Penske pairing, was eliminated Sunday.
Keselowski started on pole Sunday after Saturday’s qualifying session was cancelled due to inclement weather. The No. 2 Ford driver led in the race’s opening stages but later dropped through the order as Chevy’s Jimmie Johnson and Toyota’s Martin Truex Jr. began to assert their dominance. The Michigan native never fell outside the top 10 all race and has yet to finish outside the top five in a Chase race this year.
Logano, meanwhile, started from fifth position and also ran in the top 10 all race. The No. 22 car never showed the pace required to lead the race, but Logano was happy to show the kind of consistent speed needed to survive the Chase elimination rounds.
Starting the race with a 21-point cushion you can race your race and not have to worry about a lot of things and that’s what we did today,” Logano said post-race. “We just kind of ran an average, typical race. We didn’t set the world on fire by any means, we just ran where we were. We started fifth and finished sixth, and that’s kind of where we were all day.”
NASCAR heads to Charlotte next for the Bank of America 500. Click here for full results from Dover and here for a full schedule of next weekend’s NASCAR festivities.
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