Joey Logano wins at Las Vegas, vaults from out of NASCAR playoffs into championship four

Optimizing his fuel mileage, Joey Logano won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and advanced to the championship round a week after briefly being eliminated from the NASCAR Cup playoffs.

Logano ran the final 72 laps on one tank of fuel, holding off pole-sitter Christopher Bell by 0.662 seconds. Daniel Suarez finished third.

By virtue of winning the Round of 8 opener, Logano became the first driver to claim one of four title-eligible slots in the Nov. 10 championship finale at Phoenix Raceway.

It capped an unbelievable turn of events during the past week for the Team Penske star, who was eliminated from the playoffs at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval for about three hours — until being put back into the Round of 8 when Alex Bowman's car failed postrace technical inspection.

The 400-mile race was eventful for championship contenders as only four of the eight remaining playoff drivers finished in the top 10: Logano, Bell, William Byron (fourth) and Denny Hamlin, who rebounded for eighth after spending much of the day outside the top 20.

After falling a lap down because of an unscheduled green-flag pit stop, Kyle Larson rallied for an 11th that kept him 35 points above the playoff cutline.

A Lap 90 incident left championship contenders Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney with significant damage and in serious danger of missing the championship race.

Elliott finished 27 laps down in 33rd just ahead of Blaney, who was seven laps off the pace in 32nd.

After qualifying second, Reddick finished 35th when he was caught in a multicar crash during the restart to begin Stage 2.

Reddick attempted to take the outside lane around Elliott and Martin Truex Jr., who slid up from the bottom and into Elliott. After contact with Elliott, Reddick's No. 45 Toyota hit the wall and slid down the banking into the fronstretch grass, flipping and landing on its wheels. Though he was able to drive the car to the pits, Reddick had too much damage to continue.

"You just got to be aggressive on restarts," Reddick told NBC Sports' Marty Snider. "It's obviously how Next Gen racing has been since the beginning. I saw them both of them have a moment, and you've got to be aggressive on the restart. It is hard to pass after a while. I made a split-second decision being aggressive. By the time I realized I was in trouble, it was too late with nowhere to go. I needed to make the decision earlier when I saw them sliding to be more conservative to avoid an incident.

"It's unfortunate. It took us out of the race. We had a really fast Camry and thought we would have been in the mix all day long."

By winning the first stage for the second consecutive week, Reddick at least salvaged some points with two races remaining to make the championship finale in Phoenix.

"We can still have a good day at Homesetead and be in the mix at Marintsville," said Reddick, who has three top-five finishes in four starts at Homestead. "Ideally, yeah, it would have been nice to win today. It would be nice to win next week, and that is what we'll focus on, but thankfully we got some stage points in Stage 1, and we are not absolutely out of it on points yet. We've got a few ways, but we have to be perfect from here on out, probably."

Stage 1 winner: Reddick

Stage 2 winner: Bell

Next: The Round of 8 will continue Sunday, Oct. 27 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on NBC)