450 laps of red-hot (literally, those drivers were roasting in the cars) action at North Wilkesboro later, and Joey Logano has a Cup Series race win for the 15th straight year.

While it'd be easy to look at the numbers – 323 laps led, 18 stage points, and so on – and assume that the No. 22 cruised to victory lane, that wasn't really the case.

Why? Denny Hamlin ran him close for a long, long time in the second half of the race, staying well within a second of his long-time rival for much of the last run as he battled in vain to get past the Team Penske Ford.

That sort of excludes Hamlin from our first category here, as we take a look at the winners and losers from the first points-paying Cup Series race at the track in 30 years.

READ MORE: NASCAR Results Today: Denny Hamlin denied by dominant Joey Logano at North Wilkesboro

Winners

Joey Logano

Of course, the race winner is one of the winners from the race. We're contractually obligated to do that (probably).

It's more than just the trip to victory lane that makes Logano a big winner, though. Not only does he finally vault back above the Chase cut line, but he's pulled a near 50-point gap to Erik Jones in 17th. That's more of a cushion than he could've hoped for – and the manner of the win means that he can now start looking up, not down.

The crush of the mid-Chase pack means that he's now closer on points to 11th than 17th, and only 87 points from Carson Hocevar all the way up in seventh place with five races to go.

If the Chase started today, the points reset would leave Logano 95 points back from Denny Hamlin. If he could drag himself up into the top half of the Chase seeding though – say, passing Hocevar for seventh – he'd be just 55 points back. As Hamlin himself has proved in reeling in Tyler Reddick, a 55-point gap can be eaten away in no time at all, never mind over a full ten-race Chase.

Don't bury Even Year Logano just yet.

Shane van Gisbergen

Another man who did his Chase hopes a massive service on Sunday. Only Logano and Hamlin left Sunday's race with more points than Van Gisbergen's 47, going a long way to ease the damage caused when he was caught up in a wreck at Coronado when he looked on track for a huge day.

Just days ago, it looked like Coronado would sink the Kiwi's chance of making the postseason. Now, with a huge points haul and a stark reminder that he's more than capable of having straight-up good days even when he doesn't have to turn right, things look much rosier.

It's 54 points back to Jones now. Can he keep Jones within ten points per race until the end of the regular season? You'd be a fool to bet against it.

While we're here; more SVG radio please. 'I'm leading! What the f*** do I do now?' couldn't have come from anyone else on the grid.

Lead lap cars

Yep, all six of them. Logano, Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, Ty Gibbs, SVG and Bubba Wallace, give yourself a big pat on the back, you stayed out of trouble well enough that you finished on the lead lap in a race where that was really, really hard to do.

Old school racing.

Losers

Tyler Reddick

Reddick's luck in the first half of the regular season was so good that he could, say, have a bunch of his car torn off and discover it still drove well enough to win. Or maybe get into a huge, huge wreck – only for it to happen over the finish line as the chequered flag waved, so he didn't lose a single place.

It felt inevitable that his luck would turn at some point, but Sunday was especially brutal. Taken out by Alex Bowman slowing and turning to come onto pit road? How often does that happen?

A beat-up car and a couple of lost laps from the incident meant that he lost another 44 points to Hamlin at the top of the points standings, and 22 to the fast-approaching Ryan Blaney, who now sits just 19 points back in third place.

Ty Gibbs

Hey, didn't this kid get namedropped in the winners section earlier?

He did, and that's sort of the tragedy of Ty Gibbs' evening. He was one of a number of drivers sent to the back of the field for speeding on pit road during the race, in his case immediately after winning the first stage.

That put him deep in a hole which he had to climb out of multiple times, going a lap down on a few separate occasions despite the obvious overwhelming pace of his car.

If he'd been able to just keep the speed down on pit road and keep his track position, it's far from inconceivable that we'd be leaving this race talking about a 46-race winless streak for Logano. An opportunity lost – and based on his reaction post-race, he knows it.

Chase Elliott

The one thing that's an absolute race-killer at this track? Getting caught by a caution on the wrong side of a pit cycle. That's what happened to Chase Elliott, and it ruined his race on the spot, sending him a lap down after a strong start.

Unlike Gibbs, he was never able to dig himself out of that hole and finished the race three laps down in 17th.

Now that's not a dreadful finish, and he didn't lose a great deal of ground to Kyle Larson behind him in the points standings, but...it did make him the latest victim of Todd Gilliland's Cinderella run to the final of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge.

One different strategy decision and he could've been racing for $1m next time out at Indianapolis. Oops.

NASCAR Standings: Joey Logano vaults back into Chase contention as Tyler Reddick falters again