Truex wins title spot with little fight
Martin Truex Jr. was celebrating the victory that locked him into NASCAR’s title race when he heard the crowd roar, looked up at the big screen and saw two championship contenders jawing at each other on pit road.
“Oh, look, a fight,” the winner said.
Indeed, Denny Hamlin was knocked to the ground in a confrontation with Joey Logano in the most intense action of an otherwise lackluster playoff Sunday at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia.
Truex earned a spot in NASCAR’s championship race for the third consecutive year by leading 464 of the 500 laps. He’s the first driver to claim one of the four spots in the Nov. 17 title race at HomesteadMiami Speedway while leading the most laps in a win since Kyle Petty led 484 laps in 1992 at Rockingham.
There were just three lead changes, and Truex controlled the event from the first round of pit stops, when he beat Hamlin, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, back onto the track for the lead. Truex was hardly challenged and his Toyota coasted to his first career victory at NASCAR’s shortest track.
Martinsville marked the first of three races in the round of eight of the playoffs, in which the field will be trimmed to a winnertakeall final four for the finale. Truex is locked into the final. Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Logano are above the cutline. Kevin Harvick, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson are the bottom four.
The next two rounds will be mustwin situations for Elliott, NASCAR’s most popular driver, who endured a major mechanical failure and finished 36th in the 38car field. A victory earns a playoff driver an automatic berth into the final four.
For Truex, the win was redemption from a year ago at Martinsville when he raced Logano cleanly over the closing laps and Logano snatched the win away from Truex. Logano then won the championship.
“After last year, everybody wants to keep talking about last year, and I’m like, ‘We’ve got work to do,’ ” said Truex, the 2017 champion who will race for the title for the fourth time in five years. He was runnerup to Logano last season.
As Truex celebrated, the crowd’s focus turned to pit road where Hamlin and Logano were having what appeared to be a civil conversation. Hamlin wagged his finger at Logano, then Logano placed his hand on Hamlin’s shoulder somewhat flippantly as he walked away. Hamlin chased after him, crew members got in the way and Hamlin was knocked to the ground.
“It was a discussion. I understand him coming over and talking, standing there and having a discussion with him, everything was fine,” Hamlin said. “I think he didn’t get me agitated enough. So he said something and then pokes a little bit and then runs away trying to get me to come so he could hide behind his guys.”
Logano said the incident stemmed from ontrack contact when Hamlin shoved Logano into the wall and caused a cut tire.
“He just kind of came off the corner like there wasn’t another car on the outside of him and ruined our day,” Logano said. “Maybe shouldn’t have shoved him there at the end. I honestly just wanted to see what he was going to say, and he really wasn’t apologetic at all.”
Formula One: Lewis Hamilton overcame Ferrari’s frontrow start to win the Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City, moving the Mercedes driver closer to a sixth career Formula One championship.
Only Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas’ thirdplace finish denied Hamilton the championship by the slimmest of margins. Hamilton needed to beat Bottas by only 14 points, but picked up 10 instead. That sends the championship to next week’s U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.
Hamilton clinched the 2017 and 2018 titles in Mexico City.
Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was second, with teammate Charles Leclerc, who started on pole, fourth.