SB Nation Atlanta - NASCAR At Pocono: Joey Logano Knocks Mark Martin Out Of The Way To Win

2012 NASCAR Point Standings: Matt Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Pass Greg Biffle

2012-06-11T12:48:39Z

Engine trouble at Pocono Raceway cost Greg Biffle the overal points lead in the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, as the 11-week leader fell from first to third, behind Dale Earnhardt Jr. and fellow Rousch-owned car Matt Kenseth, who finished seventh overall in the race. Kenseth has been a steady climber is recent weeks, finishing in the top 11 in ten out of his last 11 races.

Georgia native David Ragan is sitting at 29th, currently, the only drive from the state in the Top 30.

Matt Kenseth +100
Dale Earnhardt Jr. +90
Greg Biffle +84
Denny Hamlin +81
Jimmie Johnson +70
Kevin Harvick +47
Martin Truex Jr. +42
Tony Stewart +25
Clint Bowyer +20
Brad Keselowski +3
Carl Edwards -3
Kyle Busch -6 (Holds No. 1 Wild Card, one win)
Paul Menard -27
Ryan Newman -28 (Holds No. 2 Wild Card, one win)
Joey Logano -28 (loses No. 2 Wild Card on tiebreaker to Newman)
Kasey Kahne -46 (-18 points behind Newman/Logano for Wild Card spot)
Marcos Ambrose -74
Jeff Burton -75
Jamie McMurray -80
Aric Almirola -81
Juan Pablo Montoya -86
Jeff Gordon -90
Mark Martin -100
Regan Smith -116
AJ Allmendinger -121
Bobby Labonte -138
Kurt Busch -151
Casey Mears -183
David Ragan -186
David Gilliland -198

For more on everything NASCAR, be sure to check out SB Nation's NASCAR page.

NASCAR At Pocono Results: Cheap Shot Nets Joey Logano Second-Career Win

2012-06-10T20:34:08Z

Joey Logano "won" his second-career race at Pocono Raceway Sunday, knocking Mark Martin across the first turn with fewer than five laps remaining and pulling away to score the win. Martin finished second ahead of Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, and Denny Hamlin.

Clint Bowyer finished sixth, ahead of Matt Kenseth. Dale Earnhardt Jr. had his best race in years, leading 36 laps, but was unable to gain the track position lost when he pitted for fuel on the next-to-last caution of the race. Rounding out the top-10 were Paul Menard and Jamie McMurray.

Logano's cheap move on Mark Martin follows up an incident at Darlington a few weeks ago when he put Elliott Sadler -a championship challenger in that series - into the wall on a restart. Logano won that race as well. The victory may raise his stock with Joe Gibbs Racing - he's been rumored to be out of the No. 20 Toyota nearly as long as he's been in it - but long-time fans will think little of his race-"winning" move on the beloved veteran.

NASCAR At Pocono Update: Kasey Kahne Crashes, Fuel Strategy Game In Full Force

2012-06-10T20:02:01Z

Kasey Kahne's streak of seven top-10 finishes will likely not be extended to eight today. The Hendrick Motorsports driver blew the right-front tire entering the tunnel turn and slapped the wall on lap 136 to draw the sixth yellow flag of the race. Kahne's tire likely went down as a result of contact made with Denny Hamlin as they raced for position in the third turn on the most-recent restart.

The yellow flag means the race will restart with fewer than 25 laps remaining in the Pocono 400. The fuel-mileage game is in full force, as leaders Joey Logano, Mark Martin, Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart, and Matt Kenseth are trying to make it to the finish without pitting. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who has had one of the fastest cars all day long, pitted to make sure he will be able to make it to the finish on fuel.

Amid all the fuel discussion, championship leader Greg Biffle's day has gone south. He dropped a cylinder on his Roush-Fenway Racing Ford and will almost certainly lose the lead to Kenseth or Earnhardt Jr., with whichever one that finishes better in the race taking over the top spot.

NASCAR At Pocono: Kyle Busch Blows Engine For Second-Straight Week

2012-06-10T19:00:41Z

For the second week in a row, Kyle Busch's Toyota has gone to the garage in a plume of smoke. He blew up at Dover last weekend, and now his Joe Gibbs Racing engine has failed after 76 laps in the Pocono 400. The DNF last week ended a streak of four-consecutive top-five finishes including a win at Richmond, and Busch will drop deeper in the standings with another poor finish.

The engine failure this week occurred while the field was under caution for debris. A flat tire by David Ragan of Unadilla drew the yellow flag, which was a major break for Jimmie Johnson. The five-time champ was one of fifteen drivers ticketed for speeding on pit road thus far in the afternoon and was actually caught twice - once on his pit stop, the second time while serving his penalty - and fell off the lead lap. He took the wave-around during the caution for a crash by A.J. Allmendinger to get onto the tail-end of the field, then pitted for fuel just after the restart. Ragan's tire failure drew the caution, cycling Johnson around to the lead lap.

Greg Biffle holds the lead under the extended caution for Busch's engine failure, followed by Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Joey Logano, and Matt Kenseth.

NASCAR At Pocono Update: Speeding Penalties Galore On Pit Road, Denny Hamlin Leads

2012-06-10T18:22:50Z

Several drivers, including five-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, four-time champ Jeff Gordon, August 2011 Pocono winner Brad Keselowski, perennial championship contenders Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick, and David Reutimann in a substitute role for the suspended Kurt Busch, have been tagged for speeding on pit road at the Pocono 400 on this latest cycle of green flag pit stops.

Drivers are complaining that the scoring lines along pit road are placed incorrectly in one timing section of pit lane, making them appear to be driving faster through that section than they actually are. With the competitive nature of big time stock car racing, drivers push their pit road speed to the absolute limit - a five-mile-per-hour tolerance granted by NASCAR over the posted speed limit.

Harvick in particular was reported by his team as saying that all the lights on his tachometer - stock cars use RPMs rather than miles per hour to guage their speed - were green, indicating that he was well within the limit of his pit road speed all the way down the pit lane. The mass confusion has drivers and teams scrambling to figure out what speed they can run through the pit lane without being nailed for speeding on pit road.

Among the confusion, Denny Hamlin - a four-time Pocono winner - has assumed the race lead after 55 laps. He leads Dale Earnhardt Jr. by just over two seconds. Jamie McMurray, Matt Kenseth, and Joey Logano round out the top-five.

NASCAR At Pocono Update: Peachtree City's Reed Sorenson Crashes Hard

2012-06-10T17:46:47Z

One of the two Georgia natives in Sunday's Pocono 400 will not be around for the finish.

Reed Sorenson spun in the third turn on lap 13 and slammed the wall hard, doing heavy damage to the right side of his No. 32 FAS Lane Motorsports Ford. Dave Blaney and J.J. Yeley also slid up into the outside wall, battering the nose of Yeley's Toyota and doing damage to Blaney's Chevrolet as well.

Polesitter Joey Logano has dominated the opening laps of the race, taking the lead on the initial start and holding it through the restart from a multi-car accident in turn three on lap one. Paul Menard runs second, ahead of Jamie McMurray, Marcos Ambrose, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

As expected, the newly repaved track has proved treacherous. The third turn has particularly been calamity corner, seeing both three-car wrecks in the first few laps of the race take place when a car - Landon Cassill on lap one, Sorenson on lap 13 - got loose and spun in the middle of the turn.

NASCAR At Pocono: First Caution Flies At Lap 1

2012-06-10T17:31:15Z

It didn't take too long for things to break loose at Pocono Raceway. All of two corners, in fact, were complete before Landon Cassill got loose on the outside of the turn three and spun, collecting Martin Truex Jr. before slamming the outside wall. A.J. Allmendinger also spun in the incident.

Cassill took his Toyota straight to the garage, while the entire right-side door of Truex's car - including the energy-absorbing foam that sits behind the sheetmetal - was ripped away by the contact with Cassill.

The trouble nearly broke loose on the very first corner when Denny Hamlin dove under Carl Edwards for the second position. He slid up the hill into Edwards, knocking both cars sideways and flattening the left-rear quarter panel against the tire on Edwards' car. Edwards would have no doubt had to pit as his Ford was throwing up plumes of smoke from the tire rubbing. He avoided the melee and was able to get to pit road and get the tire changed with only the penalty of having to start at the rear of the field. Seeing as he would have been there anyway, the 2005 and 2008 Pocono winner effectively starts over from the back of the field and will try to work his way forward.

NASCAR at Pocono: TNT Begins Six-Week Summer Series

2012-06-10T15:44:50Z

So you're getting ready to sit down and watch 400 miles of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing from the Pocono Raceway, right? You're going to get yourself an ice cold Coca-Cola and a snack of some sort, grab the remote, and kick back for some terrific stock car racing action, right? And to watch it, you're going to tune into Fox Sports like you have for the first 13 races of the season, right?

Wrong!

Starting this afternoon, TNT takes over coverage of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, kicking off its six-week "Summer Series." The other races that Turner Sports - entering its 30th season as a NASCAR partner - will carry this year are next week's 400-miler at the Michigan International Speedway, the first road course race of the year at Sonoma, the second-annual race at the Kentucky Speedway, the Coke Zero 400 at the Daytona International Speedway, and the 301-lapper at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

TNT's broadcast team features longtime MRN Radio pit reporter Adam Alexander on play-by-play. Former Sprint Cup drivers Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach Jr. serve as analysts. Pit reporters include Marty Snider, Matt Yocum, Ralph Shaheen, and Chris Neville. Alexander will host the pre-race show with Petty and Larry McReynolds, who also served as analyst on the Fox broadcasts.

Georgia's favorite sporting son, the legendary Bill Elliott, will play a role in TNT's pre-race broadcasts as part of the "NASCAR Generations" roundtable discussion. Other participants are NASCAR Hall of Famer Ned Jarrett, five-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, two-time Daytona 500-winning crew chief Larry McReynolds, and Petty, the third generation of NASCAR's most famous family and an eight-time race winner in the Sprint Cup Series.

Be sure to check your listings to find out where TNT is on your provider. Before this week, I could simply say "Tune into Fox 5 Atlanta" for those of us in and around the metro area, but for every TV provider there is a different lineup of cable channels.