If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good celebratory burnout. Joey Logano won the second NASCAR race of the weekend today after Kevin Harvick ran out of fuel in the lead. Logano clearly had the better fuel strategy, as he had enough left to pop a tire and start a fire doing burnouts after the checkered flag.
Somewhat like last week’s race at Pocono Raceway (albeit not THAT insane), the winner was decided via gas tank. Who saved enough fuel to push through to the end, and who came up short? Logano was the first leader to run out of gas at Pocono, so perhaps his team learned a thing or two from that loss.
Here’s the last lap and some of the big, voluptuous clouds of smoke that ensued afterwards:
Logano hadn’t led a single lap the entire race, but he finally got around Harvick’s sputtering car to take the lead on the last lap. Let’s face it, that’s all that matters.
There was more than enough tire left to make it through, too, mwahahahaha. Tires are evil, though, and they must be punished. Let’s take a look at this big, beautiful burnout, shall we?
Wonderful. Simply wonderful.
Logano kept his rear tires spinning for so long that the back of his car actually caught on fire.
Fortunately, crews were able to extinguish the flames quickly, leaving only slight damage to the car.
Unfortunately if you were hoping that these would become a semi-permanent addition to the scenery at Watkins Glen, Logano also won the honor of destroying the evidence of said burnout. Watkins Glen will be doing a major re-pave, so they let today’s Sprint Cup race winner be the first to dig into the pavement.
If you weren’t there today, you missed your only chance to see Logano’s tire marks. Womp womp. The upside is that we’ll get a smoother surface at Watkins Glen, though, so it’s not all bad.
According to NASCAR Talk, Logano became the first driver ever to sweep the Watkins Glen NASCAR weekend, and the twentieth different Sprint Cup driver to win on the road course. This was also Logano’s first career sweep. ESPN also mentions that this gave the Penske team their first win at Watkins Glen. All of those are very good reasons to do some epic burnouts.
Photo credits: NASCAR (burnout carnage), Getty Images (crew, extinguisher use, backhoe)
Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.