Martin Truex Jr. began the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway by winning the South Point Casino 400. The win was Joe Gibbs Racing’s 14th win in the first 27 races of the season and Truex’s series-leading fifth, breaking a tie he held with JGR teammates Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.
“It was a lot of fun tonight, and anytime you get a car like that, you have fun,” Truex said. “But we did have our challenges. It wasn’t easy for sure; we had to go to the back that one time for a pit road deal and work our way back to the front, and then, our car got off, and we lost some spots on that one run, and luckily, we got a caution and was able to come in and fix it. We just had to do all the little things right. We went back and forth, loose-tight, loose-tight, and we just hit it right on that last run. I think the 4 [Kevin Harvick] missed it a little. It was so easy to do tonight. You’d be good one run and sideways the next, and you couldn’t go anywhere. Then, you’d be good; it was just back and forth. We hit it right when we needed. The 4 was really strong, but we took a gamble to have extra downforce and qualify 24th and it paid off tonight.”
The win clinches Truex’s advancement to the second round of the playoffs.
“These next two weeks are all about bonus points,” Truex said. “This is big today to get six. Those are really important to get to Homestead.”
Truex took his final lead by passing Kevin Harvick with 20 laps remaining, just as Matt DiBenedetto pitted to complete the final cycle of green-flag pit stops.
“At that point, we were pretty good, and then, five laps later, we got too loose and that was why he was able to drive away,” Truex said of challenging Harvick late in the race. “That whole second-to-last run, I was babying it, trying to save the right-rear to, like, the last five laps of that run. Then, we started being a little bit faster than him. I told Cole [Pearn, crew chief], ‘f you tighten me up, we can get him.’ He got the car perfect, and I was able to hustle the car, there, at the end and get the lead and drive away.”
As Truex pulled away to an eventual four-second margin, Harvick drove to a second-place finish after closing the regular season with a win a week earlier at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“It was good,” Harvick said. “We had two solid stages, and with the way that practice went for us, that was a miracle. To be in contention with a chance to win the race with 25 laps to go says a lot about the guys working on this 4 car, and everybody did a great job of making something out of what wasn’t very bright for us on Friday.”
Brad Keselowski finished third, despite sitting on pit road with the hood up on his car for significant adjustments during a lap 188 caution when Kurt Busch hit the wall.
“The team worked on it really hard, there, and got us back to a spot where we could kind of almost steal a win,” Keselowski said. “I thought for a minute we might be able to. All in all, it was a good day. Not the win we were looking for, but a lot of perseverance and a lot to be proud of.”
Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top-five.
“It was a long night, for sure,” Blaney said. “We didn’t start very good. We started really tight and didn’t go anywhere, and I was really worried. We took really big swings at it. We were on the really tight side and really loose side and a little bit of both. We couldn’t take off very fast. Other guys would take off really fast. At the end of a run, we were really fast up by the wall, but we just lost too much ground, and then, I just got tight, there, at the end. I might have been able to run third but the top two cars were in a league of their own, especially the 19 [Truex].”
The caution for Busch’s wreck was the second of only two cautions for on-track incidents. Joey Logano also sustained damage after leading a race-high 105 laps and dominating the two 80-lap stages that made up the first 160 laps of the 267-lap race.
The Stewart-Haas Racing quartet of Clint Bowyer, Daniel Suarez, Harvick and Aric Almirola started in the first four positions. Bowyer’s struggles began early, and as he fell back through the field, Logano moved up from his 22nd-place starting spot.
After Suarez led 29 of the first 33 laps, Logano took his first lead on lap 34. Logano lapped Bowyer on lap 152, and on lap 198, Bowyer was forced into an unscheduled pit stop after contact with Paul Menard.
“We just weren’t very good tonight,” Bowyer said. “We were just off, off in all areas.”
Logano’s dominance included a stage-one win at lap 80. He gave up the lead to pit during the initial green-flag cycle of stops on lap 43, but Michael McDowell stayed out to lead 16 laps, Logano cycled back to the front on lap 59.
In stage two, Truex took the lead from Logano on lap 158 to lead the final laps of the stage after, like Logano, starting the race outside the top-20 and overcoming a slow stop after the first stage.
Elliott got by Truex for the lead on lap 172, and Hamlin also led laps after a two-tire pit stop during a lap-181 caution for a William Byron spin. But as Hamlin and Blaney, who also took only two tires during the caution, battled for the lead on the restart, Harvick took advantage and took the lead on lap 187.
Harvick continued to run up front until final green-flag pit stops.
The top-10 of the finishing order wad completely comprised of playoff drivers. Hendrick Motorsports teammates Alex Bowman and Byron finished sixth and seventh, Kyle Larson was eighth, Logano ninth and Ryan Blaney 10th.
Six playoff drivers were left to finish outside the top-10, with three of those outside the top-20. Almirola finished 13th and Hamlin 15th.
Kyle Busch was 19th after starting 20th and spending a significant portion of the race two laps down. He got into the wall on lap five and made an unscheduled pit stop on lap 12. He got back on the lead lap during the Byron caution.
Bowyer wound up 25th. Erik Jones was 36th after spending time in the garage because of a transmission problem. Kurt Busch wound up 39th [last].
Discussion about this post