MARTINSVILLE, Virginia – Martin Truex Jr. admits he was surprised by his success at Martinsville Speedway.
Truex won a hectic, long-lap driving duel with teammate Denny Hamlin in the rain-delayed NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday night, winning for the third time in the last four stops at the 0.526-mile oval – the oldest and the shortest in the series.
“I think this place has become a playground for us,” Truex told Victory Lane. “We didn’t have the best car all day, but we kept working on it and never gave up on it.”
Truex, who repeatedly pushed Hamlin into corners and tried to get inside him on the direct road, without success, eventually made the 15-lap step to the finish, sinking under Hamlin out of the second corner. . He went on to win without any challenge, Hamlin and Chase Elliott fought the rest of the way for the second.
Truex became the first repeated winner in the top NASCAR series this season.
The race was rained after 42 laps on Saturday night and was completed as the second part of a double head that started with the completion of the Xfinity Series race, delayed by rain, on Friday night.
Elliott, who won here last fall on the road to winning the series championship, kept Hamlin second. Hamlin was third, followed by William Byron and Kyle Larson.
“It was a lot of fun there at the end, running with Denny,” Truex said of his teammate Joe Gibbs Racing. “We competed cleanly and managed to come out on top.”
Team Gibbs made all four drivers finish in the top 10, as Christopher Bell took seventh and Kyle Busch 10th, leaving team owner Joe Gibbs excited and relieved.
“I just prayed that Denny and Martin wouldn’t get together running in front,” Gibbs said.
The result was not only disappointing for Hamlin, who had a dominant car and drove 276 laps, but also for Ryan Blaney, who won the first two stages and drove 157 laps, but fired an air pistol from pit after the final stop and was sent back to 19th place in the field.
Blaney rallied to finish 11th, but earlier, he and Hamlin were dominant.
Blaney overtook Hamlin to lead in Round 75 and went on to win in Stage 1 of 130 laps, and Stage 2 evolved the same way. Hamlin was quick at the start of the race, pulling comfortably forward, but Blaney eventually ran him to win that stage as well.
Hamlin’s third place was the seventh best in the top five of eight races.
“I had a very fast car for about 20 laps or so, and then it would have kind of disappeared,” Hamlin said. “We continue to run in the top three every week. Every stage, every completion – we are right there. We just need to improve a little. We just miss it. “
The race has seen several drastic changes in fortunes, perhaps none greater than for Joey Logano. He was in danger of being left at the end of the first stage, but played with others halfway through the race, remaining on the track to win the position when most of the leaders stopped.
It worked because another precaution flew shortly after, allowing it to cope with the fresh tires that most other teams already had and stayed close to the rest of the road.
Logano finished in sixth place.
The misfortune was the case of Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski and a few others, due to a major backlog, which involved more than a dozen cars on lap 387. Bowman had become as big as the second before he was caught. in the misery that ended the day, and Keselowski, a two-time Martinsville winner, had to call him the day after the wreck.
“It’s just part of the transaction in a nutshell,” Keselowski said.
The accident began when Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher reunited leaving Tower 2.
Daniel Suarez was also involved and traveled around the oval to the entrance to turn 1, got out of the car when it caught fire and left while bursting into flames.