Joey Logano wins Inaugural "Busch Light Clash" at the L.A. Coliseum

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    Yesterday evening (02/06/2022), Joey Logano won the Inaugural "Busch Light Clash" at the L.A. Coliseum. This will mark Logano's second ever Clash victory, his first coming back in 2017. Logano had beat Kyle Busch, the defending 2021 Clash winner, to the checkered flag.

The 1/4 mile track that NASCAR built for the 2022 Season opening race had a lot of excitement packed into the stadium in Los Angeles. From a series of Heat Races and Last Chance Qualifying events to concerts from recording artists Ice Cube and NASCAR team-owner Pitbull, the fans had quite the show.

NASCAR held practice and qualifying on Saturday, February 5th. An entry list of 36 drivers and teams, all ready to attempt to make the 23-car field for the Clash, creating a couple of extra races for fans to watch, prior to the main event. The top-five fastest drivers during practice were:

1. Chase Elliott [No. 9 Chevrolet / Hendrick Motorsports]: 13.455 (66.890 mph)
2. Kevin Harvick [No. 4 Ford / Stewart-Haas Racing]:13.457 (66.880 mph)
3. Chase Briscoe [No. 14 Ford / Stewart-Haas Racing]: 13.470 (66.815 mph)
4. Justin Haley [No. 31 Chevrolet / Kaulig Racing]: 13.470 (66.815 mph)
5. Kyle Busch [No. 18 Toyota / Joe Gibbs Racing]: 13.482 (66.756 mph)

It is worth noting that Tyler Reddick [No. 8 Chevrolet / Richard Childress Racing], had ran the most laps during the practice session, adding up to a total of 111 laps. 

When qualifying came, NASCAR let them have two laps to qualify, then taking the drivers best lap time of the two to determine where they would lineup for the Heat Races. 

Here is the qualifying time sheet below:

NASCAR.com

Kyle Busch and Tyler Reddick would top the leaderboard for the qualifying session, each of them being the pole sitter for the first-two of four Heat Races to take place on Sunday. Third and fourth place qualifiers, Justin Haley and Joey Logano, would start in the pole position for the last two Heat Races. All four of these drivers would win the 25-lap Heat Races from the pole, advancing automatically into the main event.

The top-four finishers in the four Heat Races would move on to compete in the main event, while the remaining drivers would get split into two different "Last Chance Qualifying", or LCQ races, with three from each headed on to compete in the "Busch Light Clash". 

Denny Hamlin would win the first of the two last chance qualifying races, bringing Kevin Harvick and AJ Allmendinger with him into the main event. The second and last, last chance qualifying race would be quite chaotic, to say the least. The eventually LCQ race winner Ty Dillon, would get penalized after the race ended for "jumping the restart", the penalty causing him to be disqualified and end his chances at competing in the main event. Dillon's disqualification would hand Ryan Preece "the win", Bubba Wallace and Harrison Burton would complete the Clash lineup of 23 drivers.

The 150-lap main event would go on to be a fairly straight green-flag event, with only a couple of cautions and only three different drivers would lead the race: Tyler Reddick (51), Kyle Busch (67), and Clash winner Joey Logano (35). 

Below are the complete results from the "Busch Light Clash" at the L.A. Coliseum:

NASCAR.com

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