Matt Kenseth took chance on fuel at Pocono and won

LONG POND, Pa. — Matt Kenseth ended a very strange race in a very unfamiliar place.

The driver collected his first career win at Pocono Raceway in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday.

Kenseth was running fourth with three laps to go, roughly 16 seconds behind the leaders.

But race leaders Joey Logano, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. all ran out of fuel in the closing laps, vaulting Kenseth from a solid top-five finish to a surprising win, his second of 2015.

“Honestly, when (Logano) ran out, I was like, ‘Alright, cool, we’re gonna run third,’” Kenseth said. “Then I saw (Truex) pulling onto pit road, and I was like, ‘That only leaves one.’”

Busch ran out of fuel on the final lap as his bid for a fourth straight victory was spoiled.

Kenseth pit on lap 123, the same lap Logano, Busch and Truex did. With Pocono’s recent history, they were banking on one final caution within the final 37 laps.

“Those guys had been pitting one lap before us, so we felt like we knew when the 22 and the 78 and the 18 would pit,” Ratcliff said. “123 we knew was a lap early, maybe a lap and half, but if you look back over the last five or six races (at Pocono), you always get a caution.

“So it was worth a gamble and everybody was taking that gamble.”

Logano led a race-high 97 laps and was in control until he started to run out of gas with three laps to go. Busch got by him but ran out on the final lap in Turn 2, allowing teammate Kenseth to steal the win. June’s Pocono winner Martin Truex Jr. was second but also ran out with two to go, finishing 19th.

“I was saving fuel just to cushion it,” Logano said after finishing 20th. “I thought I was going to be good and then I started running out and knew we weren’t going to make it. It was tough.”

For Kyle Busch, his incredible luck lately ran out half a lap early.

After winning three straight races and four of the last five before Sunday’s race, he won Saturday’s truck race and started Sunday’s race from the pole.

For a lap and a half, it looked like the No. 18 team would get lucky one more time.

Instead, he ran out so early he couldn’t make it to the start-finish line, finishing 21st.

“I didn’t know we were that close,” Busch said. “Normally when we’re close or that close, I get harped on pretty hard to save fuel. They were just telling me to save just to not put too much pressure on the car and everything else. … I wish I would’ve known that the (No.) 22 was that far away from making it.”

Busch missed the first 11 races of 2015 due to injury. Despite four wins, he still hasn’t cracked the top 30 in points to lock himself into the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Had he won Sunday, he would have been the top seed. Now, he sits 32nd, 13 points out.

“We got greedy,” he said. “I don’t know how greedy, but that’s the position we’re in. … We went for broke today and come up a little bit short so can’t fault the team.”

Jeff Gordon finished third in his final Pocono race after spending most of the day around 16th place. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who spun on lap 72, rebounded to finish fourth. Greg Biffle rounded out the top five.