(Brian Lawdermilk/NASCAR photo)
DARLINGTON, S.C. – Martin Truex Jr. did something on Sunday night that he had never done before in his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career – he won his second race in a single season.
Truex didn’t dominate the 67th annual Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, but he was in contention when it mattered most. He powered past a fading Ryan Newman going down the backstretch with 29 laps to go and weathered a late-race caution sequence inside the final 20 laps to notch his fifth career Sprint Cup win and second crown jewel of the year.
The celebration in victory lane was emotional for the Mayetta, N.J. native, who becomes the seventh driver to win both the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and the Southern 500 in the same year – joining LeeRoy Yarbrough (1969), Bobby Allison (1971), David Pearson (1976), Jeff Gordon (1997-1998), Jeff Burton (1999), Jimmie Johnson (2004) and Carl Edwards (2015).
“This is unbelievable,” Truex said of his first Darlington win. “I’ve always loved this racetrack and I’ve led a lot of laps here in my career. I just feel like something always happens … but tonight things worked in our favor. I’m so proud to get to victory lane with this (Furniture Row) group. We weren’t the best car and we actually won for once, so that was pretty cool.”
“The pit crew was flawless all race after they took a lot of heat from last weekend (at Michigan). We’ve never lost confidence, but we have had a rotten string of bad luck that we’ve just needed to shake. We’ve been one of the fastest cars all summer long, wherever we’ve been, so I guess it was worth having all that luck if that’s what it takes to get a Southern 500 trophy.”
The final run was set up by a caution with 41 laps left, when Paul Menard lost a left rear tire in turn two and collected Kurt Busch in a vicious crash that sent most of the frontrunners down pit road.
Newman and Brad Keselowski stayed on the race track and moved to the front row for a restart, which came with 34 to go and saw Newman get away from Truex out front, while Keselowski spun his tires and fell back on the outside lane.
Truex stalked Newman for the next five laps before making his move for the win, but was not secure in his fate as a caution flew with 19 to go, when Aric Almirola crashed hard following contact with Clint Bowyer in turns one and two.
That sent the leaders down pit road for a final round of stops, in which Truex’s crew got him out first, allowing him to use clean air to drive away by .607 of a second despite a valiant final effort by race-long dominator Kevin Harvick.
In total, Truex only led 28 of 367 laps – in contrast to Harvick, who started on the pole after qualifying was rained out on Friday and led a race-high 214 laps around the 1.366-mile egg shaped oval.
However, Harvick was derailed by pit road issues as he has been multiple times over the course of the last two year. Slow pit stops on laps 251 and 281 cost him the lead both times and, in total, saw the 2014 Cup champion lose 15 positions between the two service rounds.
Harvick rallied over the final 86 laps, fighting from 12th to get back to second, but simply didn’t have the positioning he needed in the end to grab his second Southern 500 victory.
