Martin Truex Jr. may not have had the best race auto Sunday night and he didn’t lead many laps, but the ones he did were the most important ones as he captured the Bojangles Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.
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Truex won a late race off pit road and led the final 12 laps en route to his second win of the season.
In turn, he would have the track position to challenge for the lead when Kevin Harvick had some trouble on pit road during the final pit stops.
“We started 12th and eighth and sixth, and we had a great race auto all night. I’ve led a lot of laps in my career, but something’s always happened”. He rallied back each time. It was just frustrating to lead laps throughout my career here. All three of those winless drivers – rookie Chase Elliott, Austin Dillon and Jamie McMurray – can’t afford to have another driver win for a first time at Richmond this week, the final race of the postseason. Truex got up to second on the restart and ran there for several laps before finally getting by Newman with 25 laps remaining. The three-time series champ making his final run at Darlington was trying to get out lapped vehicle Brian Scott.
Truex grabbed the lead, while Harvick briefly gave up second to Kyle Larson but eventually grabbed it back. Denny Hamlin took over the lead after needing only 11 seconds for his stop.
Three-time series champ Tony Stewart, making his final run at Darlington before he retires, was trying to get past the lapped auto Brian Scott just past the midway point.
When asked what his view of the incident with Scott was, he simply said, “He wrecked”.
Stewart and his crew chief Mike Bugarewicz were called to a meeting with NASCAR officials after the race, suggesting Smoke intentionally spun Scott.
The Sprint Cup Series Bojangles Southern 500 coverage begins at 6pm eastern tonight with the green flag scheduled for 6:20pm.
Zipadelli said there is something to say about trying to maintain chemistry on a team, but pit crew members these days have to understand they “got to do their job”.
When the race goes green, so will our conversation, so please join us. His team has had its share of problems on pit road this season, too.
The field first cycled through green-flag stops just before lap 50.
Truex came close – by just about a foot behind Denny Hamlin at Daytona – to becoming just the third driver in NASCAR history to win Daytona, Charlotte and Darlington in the same season. His Roush Fenway Racing teammate Trevor Bayne, who entered the race in 17th in the standings, finished 40th after suffering a mechanical failure.
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Ryan Blaney won’t make the Chase, but the 22-year-old has been competitive and part of a new generation of drivers that NASCAR will have to rely upon once its superstars are in street clothes. “You’ve got to get after it on pit road and do your job”.
