The box score of Martin Truex Jr.’s day at Las Vegas Motor Speedway shows plenty of ups and downs, so the Joe Gibbs Racing driver will take his ninth-place finish and move on.
He started fourth, finished ninth, led nine laps, averaged a 10th-place running position, fell as far back as 22nd, and battled track position and his car. It was also a battle on restarts not to give up too much to the competition, and being the only driver to stay out at the end of the first stage didn’t help, either.
“It was just trying to figure out how to minimize the damage and hope that we could get a longer run, which we did at the end, which was really helpful,” Truex said of the final stint. “I don’t know what we had going on, but restarting up front, we were pretty good, and then on the long runs, really good – I thought – probably a third-place car, but once we got back there – 16th, 18th, whatever it was – it was just really bad on the restart. I would lose three, four, five spots every time, and then once we got strung out and got going, I would pick them off and work our way forward, but then we would get another caution, and I would lose a couple more.
“It was an uphill battle, but luckily at the end we were able to have a couple of better restarts and at least maintain, and then work our way forward from there. All-in-all, it was OK. The pit call obviously killed us in Stage 2.”
By staying out at the end of the first stage, which ended on lap 80, Truex inherited the race lead. It was short-lived on older tires as the race restarted on lap 87, and teammate Denny Hamlin took the position on lap 92. Truex had fallen to 20th when the caution flew on lap 112.
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“He (crew chief James Small) told me that pretty late around the corner in (Turns) 3 and 4 and my gut reaction was, ‘Don’t do it; don’t stay out,’” Truex said. “I like to listen to my crew chief and do whatever they say no matter what because they know more about what’s going on than you do and usually, the driver’s 90 percent of the time wrong if they make their own decision or go against the crew chief.
“I went with it, but I didn’t feel good about it and then 10, nine laps or whatever here, is a lot on tires. If we would have got a quick caution, it would have worked out great because we had the lead for a few laps. But once I got back to third or fourth, it just dropped like a rock.”
Truex described his car as “terrible” in dirty air and the No. 19 team fought the balance much of the afternoon — issues that Truex felt Saturday, but after being top 10 on the board in practice and putting in a strong qualifying effort, he felt confident he had what he needed for the race.
“We had similar feel issues yesterday, and I was a little bit concerned about it, but we had such good speed I was like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’” he said. “And then, as it always does, those things that you feel in practice that make you nervous show up in the race when the track gets slick and the pace slows down, and your car just feels out of the racetrack, and that’s just what we fought today.
“Not sure what we were missing or what we did different from the last time here because I don’t remember feeling that way the last time, but we’ll look at it all and be better for next time.”
Truex is now two points above the Cup Series playoff grid cutline going into Homestead-Miami Speedway.
