Less than half a mile separated Martin Truex Jr. from cruising to Victory Lane in Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway. Instead the dominant No. 19 car, which easily led the most laps at 228 circuits, was put in a vulnerable position as the race went to overtime.
With the white flag about to fly, Bubba Wallace accidentally tagged Kyle Larson, spinning the No. 5 Chevrolet through the frontstretch grass while battling for fourth position. Truex had an advantage of nearly one second on Joey Logano, with Denny Hamlin in close pursuit of the No. 22 car on fresher tires.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Truex said on the radio, his voice reaching the next octave.
The decision for Truex’s crew chief James Small whether to pit or not was simple. The No. 19 Toyota led all lead lap cars down pit road. And while his team had a solid pit stop, Hamlin’s No. 11 bunch — statistically the best pit crew in the Cup Series garage — was able to clip Truex out of the pits to take the lead.
Truex chose the outside of the front row on the overtime finish. When the green flag waved, Hamlin jumped early in the restart zone, gaining an advantage entering Turn 1. The race was on, but Truex thought he was raced out of the groove in Turns 1 and 2 by Hamlin.
“Come in with the lead, go out second to the fastest pit crew on pit road. It‘s a tough one to swallow, but I feel like we still could have had a race for it,” a frustrated Truex said following the race. “Just got used up in Turn 1 on the restart.
“I felt like [Hamlin] used me up down in Turn 1. I didn‘t really appreciate a teammate racing me like that. I wish he would have gave me a chance, but that‘s the way it is.”
Logano took advantage of Truex on the restart for second position. On the final lap, Kyle Larson, who led 144 laps himself from the pole position, got into Truex. Following the race, the 2017 Cup champion showed his displeasure with Larson and slammed into the side of the No. 5 Chevrolet.
Sunday’s race marked the sixth time in the last 15 Richmond races that Truex led north of 100 laps and wasn’t celebrating at the end of the day in Victory Lane.
“Unfortunately, it‘s happened a few times here at Richmond,” Truex said. “Lead the whole race and then some [expletive] move brings out a caution coming to the white flag and ruins our whole night. It was unfortunate, but awesome job by my team.”
Truex extended his regular season championship lead to 14 points over Kyle Larson following seven races.
