MARTINSVILLE, Virginia – Martin Truex Jr. he admits to being surprised by his success at Martinsville Speedway.
Truex won an exciting lap for the lead with teammate Denny Hamlin in the rain-delayed NASCAR Cup Series rain race Sunday night, winning for the third time in the last four stops in the oval of 0.526 miles: the oldest and shortest in the series.
“I guess this place has become a playground,” Truex told Victory Lane. “We didn’t have the best car all day, but we kept working on it and never left.”
Truex, who punched Hamlin repeatedly in the corners and tried to get inside by the straights unsuccessfully, finally made the pass with 15 laps to go, dodging below Hamlin coming out of the second turn. He marched to victory without any other challenge, as Hamlin and Chase Elliott fought the rest of the way per second.
Truex became the first repeat winner of the best NASCAR series this season.
The race ran out after 42 laps on Saturday night and was completed as the second part of a double-header that began with the end of the Xfinity Series race, delayed by rain, from Friday at night.
Elliott, who won here last fall on his way to winning the series championship, held Hamlin second. Hamlin was third, followed by William Byron and Kyle Larson.
“It was a lot of fun there in the end, competing with Denny,” Truex said of his teammate Joe Gibbs Racing. “We ran clean and were able to come out on top.”
Gibbs ’team finished all four riders in the top ten, as Christopher Bell finished seventh and Kyle Busch 10th, leaving team owner Joe Gibbs excited and relieved.
“I was just praying that Denny and Martin wouldn’t run around ahead,” Gibbs said.
The result was not only disappointing for Hamlin, who had a dominant car and led 276 laps, but also for Ryan Blaney, who won the first two stages and led 157 laps, but dragged an air pistol from the his well after the final stop and was sent back to the 19th in the field.
Blaney reunited to finish eleventh, but before that, he and Hamlin were the dominant ones.
Blaney overtook Hamlin at the head of lap 75 and got the win in the first stage of 130 laps, and Phase 2 played the same. Hamlin was quick at the start of the race, pulling comfortably ahead, but Blaney eventually finished him off to win that stage.
Hamlin’s third place was his best seventh race in eight races.
“We had a very fast car for 20 laps or so, and then it would just go,” Hamlin said. “We just keep running the first three every week. Every stage, every finish, we’re there. We just have to improve a little bit. We just miss her.”
The race featured several drastic changes in fortune, perhaps none greater than for Joey Logano. He was in danger of being knocked down at the end of the first stage, but played with others halfway through the race, staying on track to gain position when most of the leaders clashed.
It worked because a bit of caution flew in shortly after, allowing him to look for the fresh tires most other teams already had and stayed close to the rest of the way.
Logano finished sixth.
The misfortune was the case of Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski and several others due to a large build-up in the rear that involved more than a dozen cars on lap 387. Bowman had come in second before getting caught up in the mess that ended his day, and Keselowski, a two-time winner in Martinsville, also had to call him a day after the wreck.
“It’s just part of the short deal,” Keselowski said.
The crash began when Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher reunited leaving the second round.
Daniel Suarez was also involved and turned the oval around until the entrance to turn 1, got out of his car when it caught fire and drove away as it exploded in flames.