Joey Logano bags first win in Next Gen NASCAR, topping pole-sitter Kyle Busch in ‘Clash at the Coliseum’

Joey Logano bags first win in Next Gen NASCAR, topping pole-sitter Kyle Busch in ‘Clash at the Coliseum’

Joey Logano bags the first win in Next Gen NASCAR toping pole-sitter Kyle Busch in ‘Clash at the Coliseum’ (Via IMAGO)

NASCAR 2022 season stated with a bang as 150-lap event saw Team Penske driver Joey Logano started in fourth position and made all the  way to P1 to win race, held at LA Memorial Coliseum as the clash was shifted from Daytona Motor speed way for the first time in history. Joey Logano claimed the inaugural victory for NASCAR’s new Next Gen Cup Series and also became the first driver to have won the Clash for the second time.

The unofficial start saw NASCAR legend 2 times champion Kyle Busch starting  the exhibition race  at pole position and dominated the first half but conveniently but following the 75-lap halftime break Kyle Larson wrecked Justin Haley and brought out the yellow flag with 34 laps to left to race Joey Logano  joined the champion at the restart and held the lead all way to the checkered flag to mark his win.

 Following the victory Joey Logano expressed his happiness in a post-race interview with Fox saying   “This is special to get the first Next Gen win, the first win out here in the Coliseum, it’s a special one, so we’re going to have some fun and celebrate it,”

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The race also saw certain upsets as NASCAR champions Brad Keselowski and Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch’s brother, failing to make it out of the heats to join the main event.

Was the “clash at the Coliseum “a success ?

NASCAR
Clash at the Coliseum

The exhibition race took place on a temporary paved quarter-mile asphalt track (0.4 Km) built over the Coliseum’s football field cost over $1 million to build the track and  will be demolished starting this week with the materials recycled for another building project. The unique event included a pre-race concert by Trackhouse Racing co-owner Pitbull and a halftime performance by L.A. native Rapper Ice Cube.

The LA Coliseum has the capacity to host  60,000 fans for The Clash, hosted a strong and loud crowd of which 70% of tickets purchasers identified as first-time race attendees according to NASCAR said. The  build-up in Los Angeles for next week’s Super Bowl scheduled to take  place at the Coliseum only helped publicize NASCAR’s big party making it a commercial success.

Champion Joey Logano expressed his opinion on how important was it make the even a success saying “The hype around this, you watch football games lately, they’re advertising the Clash as much as they’re advertising Daytona 500. That kind of puts it into perspective a little bit on what this event meant to our sport, how big of a gamble this really was, right? This could have gone awful. It went great.”

The runner-up Kyle Bush weighted on the champions words saying  “Ben Kennedy and the guys at NASCAR, if this didn’t work, it was going to be ugly,”

Also read:Racer Greg Biffle set for a surprise return to NASCAR Cup Series in 2022 – Reports