Johnson indicated that Truex’s dominance shouldn’t be used as a barometer for the ability to pass at Charlotte.
Advertisement
Martin Truex Jr takes the checkered flag to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup series auto race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., Sunday, May 29, 2016.
It is hard for anyone in the NASCAR world to not appreciate all that Truex Jr. accomplished Sunday night.
Biffle was referring four races earlier this season that Truex might have won had it not been for unfortunate circumstances.
Truex set records for most laps led in a Coca-Cola 600 and most miles led by a single driver at any track, leading 392 laps of the 400-lap race for a total of 588 miles in front.
We all know it by now: Truex’s season has been filled with the kind of bad luck reserved for the truly damned.
“So proud to have Jeffrey Bohr ride with us this weekend”, said Truex. “I think we’re going the right way with the race cars”.
Johnson led the second-most laps in the field at five and, at times, seemed to be close to making a move to get the lead. Keselowski was fifth, but never really in it. Logano was running third when a pit penalty knocked him back a lap. “So many greats in this sport, so many huge accomplishments”.
Harvick made up ground in the final 150 miles, but could never get close enough to challenge Truex.
To say Martin Truex Jr. dominated the 2016 Coca-Cola 600 dominated the Coca-Cola 600 would be an understatement.
He won for the fourth time in the series and the first time since June at Pocono.
“It just seemed like everything was going the way we needed it to do”, Truex said.
Harvick finished second, followed by Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski.
Truex said Jimmie Johnson passed him briefly at one point to lead “for about 100 feet”, he joked before retaking control.
He bettered Jim Paschal’s mark of leading 335 laps to win at Charlotte in 1967.
Especially when things have gone as wrong as they had for Truex and his single-car Furniture Row team the past year.
“They’ve had a few runs where they’ve just been the class of the field and things have just kept them from Victory Lane”, Johnson said. “Tonight he wasn’t going to be denied there was no way around that”.
“We didn’t have anything for the 78”, said ninth-place Joey Logano, who had won the previous two races at Charlote (last fall’s Bank of America 500 and last week’s Sprint All-Star race).
But there was more to the win than a trophy and winner’s check.
But now he’s guaranteed a spot in the Chase for the Cup championship and established himself as a force to be reckoned with for the remainder of the season. The new tires proved to pay off and Kyle Busch drove around and captured the victory. He has one top-five, two top-10s and two races he did not finish. Starting from the pole, his average speed of 160.44 mph and the time in which the race finished (3 hours, 44 minutes, 8 seconds) were also 600 records.
THEY SAID IT: “I kind of felt like he was playing with us”.
But there was an element of truth in what Johnson and Truex said.
Advertisement
The pre-race festivities featured troops, military aircraft and many other American themes that set the scene for Memorial Day. There were tanks, soldiers marching down the steps of the stands, a flyover and a paratrooper display. Check out a few winners and losers from the race.
