Martin Truex, Jr won the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway for his 6th win of the season.
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This weekend, NASCAR’s most popular driver will round his last turn at Charlotte Motor Speedway during the Bank of America 500.
“It definitely was a surprise”, Jones said after the NASCAR XFINITY Series drivers’ meeting.
Martin Truex Jr. once again had a fast vehicle Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He fought back to finish third.
Hamlin turned a lap at 191.598 miles per hour in the No. 11 Toyota on the 1½-mile oval for his first pole of the season.
Martin Truex Jr., overcame an uncharacteristically bad qualifying run, starting seventeenth, but defended his lead on the last restart and won by nearly a full second. Jimmie Johnson is the king of Charlotte (as he is at many tracks) with eight career victories. He’s lagging behind Truex, victor of the playoff opener at Chicago, and teammate Busch, victor the last two weeks. There are a total of 12 drivers who are still in the running to continue.
Busch trailing the leader Martin Truex Jr.by 18 points in the playoff standings. “We need to log all the points we can while we have the track position, and I’m glad we’re starting off this round this way, and hopefully our auto is good enough to stay there to get those points early on”.
It was Truex’s sixth win of the year and 21st top-10 finish, both NASCAR highs. “Hopefully, it puts some of the people who are talking to rest because we are going into 2018 to win a lot of races in that 88 vehicle”.
However, he had accumulated enough points early in the race to qualify for the second round. However, coming out of Turn 4, his No. 18 Interstate Battery vehicle got loose and slammed into the wall. Think of it this way: The first round of the National Basketball Association playoffs are great and all, but after a while you get bored with watching No. 1 seeds beat up on teams just sneaking in. “Good thing with our FedEx Toyota we had a good, fast vehicle and put it on the top”.
A pair of less-than-stellar restarts late in the race-not to mention contact from Kurt Busch’s spinning vehicle on Lap 335-relegated Larson to a 10th-place result that could and should have been better. Kurt Busch returns to Charlotte as the only driver over the last five races to finish Top 10 in each and he also has one career win here. It certainly didn’t seem that Sunday would be Truex’s day, especially not after he qualified 17th and seemed to be off from his typical form. This is when we get the sport’s heavy hitters going head to head, or bumper to bumper in their case. Heading into this weekend, the Mayetta, NJ native had accumulated five wins and led over 1,800 laps. Truex had found his way to the front, and had the race lead in sight. Unfortunately, Larson and his crew could not get out of their own way. After the ensuing pit stops, Larson took the lead, with Truex second. We screwed up, we’ll get them Sunday.
“I’ve gotten better at winning, or whatever, learning how to win”, Larson said. Hopefully they don’t use that PJ1 spray on any other race tracks for a while. Looking at just the 2017 season, he has been even better averaging 96.2 DraftKings points per race which is over 40 more than Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Larson who have also been terrific this season.
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“Trust me, I have heard plenty of people tell me I have never won any of the NASCAR races on the top three levels”, Bowman said.
