Truex Jr. out to keep momentum

NOTEBOOK

LOUDON, N.H. — Darlington Raceway is not the ideal venue to begin a late surge to the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship.

Martin Truex Jr. managed the final 44 laps of the unforgiving pear-shaped monstrosity to take the checkered flag in the Bojangles Southern 500 on Sept. 4. He followed with a third-place finish at Richmond on Sept. 10, to conclude the Race to the Chase in sixth place.

Truex capitalized on that momentum last Sunday by winning the Ninja Turtles 400 in the first event of the 10race Chase tournament.

Truex will look to score the Chase daily double when he climbs inside the No. 78 car for this afternoon’s running of the Bad Boy Off Road 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

“We started off the season strong with a second at the Daytona 500 but we had a tough summer with a lot of ups and downs and some bad luck and I feel we should have won more races and didn’t,” said Truex.

“Then we went to Darlington and won that race and that seemed to give us that momentum and gave us our confidence back.”

Truex’ victory at Chicagoland automatically advanced his team to the second round of the Chase regardless of how he runs at New Hampshire or Dover next weekend. Truex finished second to Carl Edwards in qualifying and will begin the race on the outside of Row 1.

Byron trucks on

Pole-sitter William Byron took the checkered flag in the Camping World Truck Series UNOH 175 in NASCAR’s initial truck Chase race. The rookie captured his record sixth truck series win in his Magic Mile debut and secured a berth in the Chase. The truck Chase has seven races as opposed to 10 in the Sprint Cup series.

Byron guided the No. 9 Liberty University Toyota untouched in a race that included eight cautions. Christopher Bell was second and Matt Crafton was third. Bryan leads the truck Chase standings with 2,052 points going into Saturday’s DC Solar 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Bonsignore better late

Justin Bonsignore surged from the final restart on the outside with two laps remaining and held on to win the Whalen Modified Tour F.W. Webb 100.

Bonsignore gunned the No. 51 Phoenix Communications Chevrolet into Turn 1 and fended off late challenges by veteran drivers Ron Silk and Doug Coby to secure his third win of the season and first at NHMS.