Truex outlasts teammate Hamlin to win again at Martinsville
MARTINSVILLE, Va., April 12, (AP): Martin Truex Jr won a stirring, laps-long duel for the lead with teammate Denny Hamlin in the delayed NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway.
Truex, who nudged Hamlin repeatedly in the turns and tried to get to his inside on the straightaways without success, finally made the pass with 15 laps to go, ducking underneath Hamlin coming out of the second turn. He sailed off to victory without another challenge as Hamlin and Chase Elliott battled the rest of the way for second.
Truex won for the third time in the last four races on the 0.526-mile oval, and became the first repeat winner this season.
The race was rained out after 42 laps Saturday night, and was completed as the second part of a doubleheader that started with the completion of the raindelayed Xfinity Series race from Friday night.
Elliott, who won here last fall on his way to winning the series championship, held off Hamlin for second. Hamlin was third, followed by William Byron and Kyle Larson.
“That was a lot of fun there at the end, racing with Denny,” Truex said about his Joe Gibbs Racing team-mate. “We raced clean and we were able to come out on top.”
The outcome was not only disappointing for Hamlin, who had a dominant car and led 276 laps, but also for Ryan Blaney, who won the first two stages and led 157 laps but dragged an air gun out of his pit after the final stop and was sent back to 19th in the field.
Earlier, he and Hamlin were dominant.
Blaney passed Hamlin for the lead on Lap 75 and cruised to victory in the 130-lap Stage 1, and Stage 2 played out much the same. Hamlin was fast early in the run, pulling comfortable ahead, but Blaney eventually ran him down to win that stage, too.
The race featured several drastic changes in fortunes, perhaps none bigger than for Joey Logano. He was in danger of being lapped at the end of the first stage, but gambled with others by staying on the track to gain track position when most of the leaders pitted.
It worked because another caution flew shortly thereafter, allowing him to pit for the fresh tires most other teams already had and stayed near the front the rest of the way.
Logano finished sixth. Misfortune was the case for Alex Bowman, Brad Keselowski and several others because of a major pileup on the backstretch involving more than a dozen cars on Lap 387. Bowman had gotten as high as second before getting caught up in the mess that ended his day, and Keselowski, a two-time winner at Martinsville, also had to call it a day after the wreck.
The accident started when Kyle Busch and Chris Buescher got together exiting Turn 2.
Daniel Saurez also was involved, and rode around the oval to the entrance to Turn 1, climbed out of his car when it caught fire and walked away as it burst into flames.
Meanwhile, Josh Berry has worked for several years as a coach for JR Motorsports, working with up-and-coming drivers and enjoying their success as their careers developed.
On Sunday, he showed he can do what he tells his pupils to do. Berry passed star rookie Ty Gibbs with 28 laps to go at Martinsville Speedway and earned his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series victory in the completion of a race that started Friday night.
“It’s unbelievable, man. It really is,” Berry said, adding that his familiarity with the track from his short-track career was a source of confidence. “It’s really going to take a while to soak this in.”
That was true for Berry, and also for his boss, Dale Earnhardt Jr, who said on a postrace Zoom call that he was watching the race at home but, “with about 20 to go, I got to where I couldn’t watch it anymore . ... I’ve never been so nervous about a finish.”
Earnhardt said he did peek at the TV as the final laps wound down, and once he saw Berry take the white flag with a pretty nice lead, “We cried some happy, happy tears.”