Road to the Sprint Cup: Part 5

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This is the last of a five-part series recapping the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, in which Jimmie Johnson would claim a record-tying seventh Cup championship. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

TALLADEGA SUPERSPEEDWAY Team Penske’s Joey Logano stormed into the semifinal round of the 2016 Chase with another victory at Talladega Superspeedway. He put the No. 22 Ford in front for good late in the race and kept it there over the final 45 laps to notch his 16th career victory and second of the season. Logano became just the second driver in 14 years with back-to-back victories in the track’s fall race. Clint Bowyer had been the last one to do it, in 2010 and 2011. Richard Petty Motorsports rookie Brian Scott challenged Logano down the stretch but fell 12 one-hundredths of a second short at the checkered flag. Denny Hamlin finished third to lead a parade of four Joe Gibbs Racing drivers into the Round of 8. Kurt Busch and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. completed the top five.Pole sitter Martin Truex Jr. led only two laps before retiring with engine failure midway through the first half of the race. His 40th-place finish eliminated Truex from the post-season Chase. He was joined on the sidelines by Austin Dillon, Chase Elliott and Brad Keselowski – who also was knocked out by engine failure at Talladega after leading a race-high 90 laps. Dillon finished the Round of 12 tied with Hamlin for the eighth and final transfer spot but lost the tiebreaker, based on a driver’s best finish in the current round of the post-season. Dillon’s was sixth at Kansas Speedway, Hamlin’s was third in the Talladega race … which went four laps past its scheduled distance because of a late caution for Alex Bowman’s spin. Truex had won two of the first five post-season races heading into the Hellmann’s 500 and was among the favorites to reach The Championship Four at Homestead-Miami Speedway. But engine failure dropped Truex from title contention. He fell 18 points short of advancing to the next round.

Keselowski was the highest-seeded driver to be eliminated at Talladega. Entering the post-season, he was the No. 2 seed behind Kyle Busch. Race Results | Race Story | Race PhotosMARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY Jimmie Johnson’s steady march toward what would be a record-tying seventh Cup Series championship continued at Martinsville Speedway. He led just once all day, but he had the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet in front when it counted most – leading the final 92 laps and beating runner-up Brad Keselowski to the finish by 1.2 seconds. Three Joe Gibbs Racing entries – driven by Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch – filled the rest of the top five. Pole sitter Martin Truex Jr. finished seventh after leading six times for 147 laps. For two straight rounds of this year’s post-season Chase, Johnson quickly won a race to guarantee advancement. In this case, the victory put him into The Championship Four at …

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