Hungry Truex savors rare taste of victory
Waltrip driver takes his time enjoying second career win
SONOMA, Calif. — The postrace party was a blur after Martin Truex Jr.’s first win in 2007. The celebratory cool-down lap, the burnouts, the drive to Victory Lane all happened so fast.
So he planned to savor every minute of his next win.
He just didn’t think it would take six years.
Truex snapped a 218-race winless streak Sunday with an easy victory on the road course at Sonoma Raceway. It was only the second win of Truex’s career, but it put Michael Waltrip Racing in Victory Lane for the second year in a row, after Clint Bowyer won here last season.
Overwhelmed with emotion as he crossed the finish line, Truex made the celebration count.
“I was a freaking mess. It was terrible,” he said. “I had to stop and start doing donuts because I couldn’t think about what I was doing. I tried to key the radio once, and I couldn’t even talk. So I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to do some donuts and wave to the fans.’ But after I stopped the first time and did that, I calmed down a little bit and I just wanted to make sure I took my time coming back, because I remember at Dover it all happens way too fast. You never know when you’re going to get that opportunity again.”
Truex blew out his rear tires, tried to wave to every single fan he saw and took a slow drive around the picturesque road course on his way to Victory Lane, where the MWR crew was waiting to drink from the winner’s enormous wine glass.
“I told them on the radio, if they’re waiting on me, too bad. I’m taking my time,” he said. “You can’t explain the feeling. When it’s been that long and you worked so hard and you’ve been so close ... when you think at times, ‘Man, is this ever going to happen again?’ You can’t explain the feeling. It’s pretty surreal.”
Truex worked his way to the front and used strategy to stay with the leaders. He then pulled away after the final restart and built a healthy lead of more than six seconds over Juan Pablo Montoya, who was running second until he ran out of gas on the final lap.
“I’m ecstatic. But I’m not exactly sure how that happened,” said Truex, who admitted he wasn’t pleased with his car following Friday practice. “The car was just phenomenal all day long, and once I was near the front and didn’t have to run the car 110 percent, it just would stay with me on the long runs and I was able to drive away from everyone.”
Montoya, who came into the weekend expecting that if he didn’t win, he would at least have a huge points day, dropped all the way to 34th after having to coast to the finish. He took a shortcut to skip the final turn, drifted to the finish line and parked. He then walked back to the garage, annoyed his Chip Ganassi Racing team never told him to save fuel.
“We’ve got tools to prevent things like that from happening,” Montoya said.
“I don’t know if all the fuel didn’t go,” he said. “This is what we’ve been doing all year. We all work together and we’re all trying to do the best we can. Half the reason we’re 20something in points — we’re not 20-something in points because we’re not running fast. We’re 20-something in points because we had a lot of mechanical problems, and days like this, we throw them away.”
Crew chief Chris Heroy was perplexed about the shortage.
“We don’t know what happened — we were on the same strategy as (Truex),” Heroy said through a team spokeswoman. “We’re going to go back to the shop and figure it out.”
Montoya got little sympathy from Kyle Busch, who was spun by Montoya early in the race when Montoya drove too deep into a corner and wheel-hopped over a curb.
“Awww. My heart melts for @jpmontoya who ran out of gas,” Busch tweeted moments after the race.
Jeff Gordon finished second. Carl Edwards was third, followed by Kurt Busch, who climbed back from a pair of speeding penalties.
“Yeah, we were fast, even on pit road. Twice,” Busch laughed. “I messed-up, flat-out. I didn’t hit my tachometer right and I was speeding both times. It was one of those where I’m like, how does that happen? I just put myself in a position that was poor, trying to get too much on pit road.”