Just like the last time the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series came to the Tricky Triangle, drivers and their teams had to play the waiting game.
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He added his 10th career pole, too.
In addition to all of Truex’s outstanding highlights from Friday and Saturday that make him the favorite Sunday, he had plenty of credentials showing he was already a solid candidate to win.
The victory was just the second in 711 starts for Front Row owner Bob Jenkins.
“The No. 9 is really so fast”, Hayley said. He is actually tied with Jimmie Johnson for seventh, but Johnson wins the tiebreaker because of having more wins this season. So that’s why we kept cars out originally under caution. It was Byron’s fifth victory of the season and fourth in the last six races. Five races remain before the 16-driver field is determined. The Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 was moved from Sunday to Monday in June, and was able to run in its entirety.
But a crew chief switch might make the difference. The Pennsylvania 400 was Paul Menard’s first race with new crew chief, Danny Stockman. Buescher, a rookie with just 27 Cup starts, won the 2015 Xfinity Series title and was farmed out from Roush Fenway Racing for experience.
Menard made Sprint Cup’s championship chase past year, but stands 23rd and out of the playoffs with just six races left in the regular season.
“We’re in the hunt”, he said. It’s not fun. Your people get beat down. “We’ve been heading in the right direction”.
Buescher: He’s certainly this season’s surprise race victor. But he and other frontrunners pitted on lap 99 when Truex, who was several laps down, tore up yet another right front tire. The Team Penske driver walked away unhurt and he blamed an improperly installed brake line on the crash.
That means on Monday, it’s go time as the drivers will hit the track and try to get a full day of racing in before getting ready for road racing at Watkins-Glen next week.
“Only if it had rained a little earlier, we would have had a lot different outcome”, Logano said. “It’s just the way it is. I knew something wasn’t right in (Turn) 1 and 2 and I got real tight off of (Turn) 2 on that restart and went down the back and was like, ‘Ah, it feels OK.’ And, as I got closer to the tunnel turn I felt it start to go down and by the time I let off and tried to slow down it was just going straight for the fence”. “The possibility of two in one season, that’s painful”. Gordon is racing for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is suffering from concussion-like symptoms.
Gordon came out of retirement to drive Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevrolet. Chase Elliott, Austin Dillon, Ryan Newman, Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson are the four winless drivers perilously holding on to the final five spots.
No matter how long Gibbs’ clear advantage lasts, it’s unlikely the rest of the series catches up before the end of the year, which makes this Sprint Cup title JGR’s to lose.
“[Dillon] did a good job playing aero games and getting us behind and I was working hard trying everything I could and finally I got a really good run when he got hung up with the lap [ped] vehicle and [I] was able to get clear of him”, Jones said.
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“I’m just proud of Tommy (Baldwin, auto owner) and then the guys on the box for kind of realizing there was opportunity for a strategy play, there”, Smith said.
