The victor of Sunday’s Chase for the Sprint Cup opener and the last-place playoff driver at Chicagoland Speedway were not surprises.
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He put himself in position Saturday to also capture the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship and solidify his status as a rising star. He is now guaranteed a spot in the second playoff round when the 16-driver field is cut by four following races next week at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and October 2 at Dover International Speedway.
Who Had a Good Day: Blaney’s not in the Chase but matched his career-best finish of fourth for the third time… We know these races don’t go green that long, typically. We know that we see late-race cautions way more often than not. “Just excited for everybody”. “We can overcome it”.
Martin Truex Jr. became the first driver to win in the first round of the 2016 Chase and earned an automatic berth to the second round. Sandwiched in between the Darlington and Chicagoland wins was a third-place finish at Richmond. By the 30th lap, he was eighth.
Johnson was running second when he was caught speeding on pit road during the last green-flag stop, yelling “no way!” on his radio when told he had to serve a pass-through penalty. And that’s when Truex turned up the wick and drove his heart out to get back in contention.
“You can’t control when a caution is going to come out”. You never give up and just keep fighting. We had a really good auto all day.
With 10 laps remaining, it was doubtful that Truex, who running second, was going to catch the lead auto driven by Chase Elliott.
“The hard compound came off it”, Cole Pearn, Truex’s crew chief, said.
“On the last lap I tried to get to the throttle early and try to get a run on him on exit”, Larson said. “I wasn’t going to catch him”.
Elliott’s lead over Truex had shrunk to about one second when McDowell’s tire blew. “We don’t have to worry about the things we can’t control”.
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Truex’s vehicle is headed back to the NASCAR R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina, along with runner-up Joey Logano’s auto and Chase Elliott’s third-place vehicle, which was chosen as the random.
