{"id":22992,"date":"2018-11-18T20:15:08","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T02:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=22992"},"modified":"2018-11-18T22:22:44","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T04:22:44","slug":"championship-4-prove-why-they-were-considered-the-best-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/18\/championship-4-prove-why-they-were-considered-the-best-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Championship 4 prove why they were considered the best ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

HOMESTEAD, Fla. \u2013 Leading into Sunday night\u2019s Ford EcoBoost 400<\/strong> at Homestead-Miami Speedway<\/strong>, much was made about the season\u2019s \u201cBig 3\u201d deciding the championship \u2013 all former champs, Kyle Busch<\/strong>, Kevin Harvick<\/strong> and Martin Truex Jr.<\/strong> And yet, as it turned out the \u201cfourth\u201d \u2013 Joey Logano<\/strong> – was \u201cbig\u201d enough when he needed to be too.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Joey Logano, driver of the #22 Shell Pennzoil Ford, and Kevin Harvick, driver of the #4 Jimmy John’s Ford, lead a pack of cars during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 18, 2018 in Homestead, Florida. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Joey Logano out-ran the threesome to earn his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship, beating in order Truex, Harvick and Busch to the checkered flag. It was as true a Playoff royale as you could imagine \u2013 the four championship-eligible drivers dominated the day.<\/p>\n

They combined to lead 179 of the race\u2019s 267 laps. Each led at least 20 laps and Logano fittingly bested the entire race field, leading 80 laps in all. He passed 2017 champion Truex with 12 laps remaining and held the lead to the championship checkered flag, winning by a smooth 1.7-seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are the champion, you are the champion,” his crew radioed as Logano drove around the track from the checkered flag.<\/p>\n

And he earned it by beating the season\u2019s absolute best. For the first time since NASCAR implemented the Playoffs, the four championship finalists finished first, second, third and fourth.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Martin Truex Jr., driver of the #78 Bass Pro Shops\/5-hour ENERGY Toyota, races during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 18, 2018 in Homestead, Florida. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt was a hell of a battle, I can tell you that,” Truex said on pit road after the race. \u201cEverybody had good cars. Everybody fought hard and I guess we finished 1-2-3-4 [glances at scoreboard]. Yeah, I thought that was the case, so I mean that just shows the quality of the teams that were in it, and any one of us could’ve hit it right tonight and won it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree other amazing teams are lucky to be part of that four.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logano\u2019s win Sunday night was his third on the year \u2013 rounding out a trifecta of superspeedway (Talladega, Ala.), short track (Martinsville, Va.) and mile-and-a-half (Homestead) victory venues. All combined, the four championship eligible drivers won an impressive 23 of the season\u2019s 36 races \u2013 the most ever by a championship foursome. Harvick and Busch led the way with eight victories each. Truex had four wins.<\/p>\n

And they showed that domination again Sunday to settle the title.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 M&M’s Toyota, leads a pack of cars during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 18, 2018 in Homestead, Florida. (Photo by Chris Trotman\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI would say, this was the best championship four ever put together,” Logano\u2019s crew chief Todd Gordon said. \u201cIt\u2019s just surreal to think you raced Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr for the championship. And again we proved you have to win [the race] and Joey elevated himself to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed. Logano turned in the best Playoff run of the foursome. He scored the most points and averaged a 8.6 place finish in the 10 Playoff races compared to Truex (9.1), Busch (10.2) and Harvick (11.5).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went up against the best of the best,” Logano said. \u201cNo one was up there by accident. To beat the best is what makes this championship feel so good.”<\/p>\n

Before he climbed in the car, he told one of his crew man, “I’m climbing in as a driver but I’m climbing out as the champion.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that’s exactly what we did.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service HOMESTEAD, Fla. \u2013 Leading into Sunday night\u2019s Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, much was made about the season\u2019s \u201cBig 3\u201d deciding the championship \u2013 all former champs, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. And yet, as it turned out the \u201cfourth\u201d \u2013 Joey Logano – was \u201cbig\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":22990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[668,527,154,95,59,244,16],"class_list":["post-22992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-ford-ecoboost-400","tag-homestead-miami-speedway","tag-joey-logano","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-kyle-busch","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/358663.jpg?fit=4528%2C3228","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-5YQ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22997,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22992\/revisions\/22997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}