Joey Logano started fast and closed strong Sunday at Michigan International Speedway, dominating the day in marching to his first points-paying win of the season. The Team Penske driver started from the pole, led thirty of the first forty laps and sealed the deal by keeping his Number-22 Ford in front over the final forty-eight trips around the two-mile Irish Hills oval. Logano led 138 of the two hundred laps run Sunday, backing up last month’s victory in the Sprint All-Star Race with his fifteenth career Cup Series win.

The margin of victory was eighty-eight one-hundredths of a second over rookie runner-up Chase Elliott. Kyle Larson came home in third place with Michigan native Brad Keselowski running fourth and regular-season points leader Kevin Harvick completing the top five. With team owner Roger Penske celebrating fifty years in motor sports this season, Sunday’s victory by Logano was the team’s fiftieth with Ford Motor Company … Youth was served on Sunday with the average age of the top three finishers – Logano, Elliott and Larson – just 23 years old, the youngest average age for the top three finishers in a Sprint Cup race in NASCAR’s sixty-eight- year history.

Kurt Busch finished tenth, not only bidding for his second straight win of this season but his second consecutive victory in Michigan’s June race. Although he missed another trip to Victory Lane, Busch did hold onto second place in the regular-season standings and now trails leader Harvick by thirty points heading into an off-weekend. The Sprint Cup Series will then resume June 26 th in Sonoma, California.