LAS VEGAS – Martin Truex Jr. nearly converted on his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in a year and a half in the most Las Vegas cliché of ways.
Truex seemed poised for a top-five finish in the closing laps at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but (ahem) a gamble on pit strategy gave his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota a slender hold on the lead when Sunday afternoon’s Pennzoil 400 lurched into overtime with a late-race caution period. Truex made the most of crew chief James Small’s decision to stay out on older tires – which moved him from fourth to first for the final restart — and though he eventually slid to a seventh-place finish, the veteran driver applauded the call.
“Could never quite get it where we need it. I think we were about a third-place car, maybe fourth. Just a good, solid day,” Truex said. “We’re in Vegas, we might as well roll the dice, and like everybody says, we come here to gamble. I was proud of James for that. Last year, we didn’t, and it bit us. We gave up a few spots, but all in all, it was a solid day.”
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The result marked Truex’s sixth straight top-10 finish at the 1.5-mile Nevada track. His reference to last year’s outcome was the No. 19 team’s choice for four fresh tires on the race’s final pit stop when most of his rivals took just two.
Sunday’s wager took a different tack. Perhaps taking note of JGR teammate Denny Hamlin’s ability to stay competitive with the Hendrick Motorsports duo of eventual winner William Byron and runner-up Kyle Larson after a two-tire stop earlier in the final stage, Small called for Truex to stay out while the rest of the front-runners took new rubber.
Truex lined up on the inside of Byron for the last green flag of the day and launched well for the final two-lap dash, keeping close with the No. 24 Chevrolet driver for most of the next-to-last lap. After the white flag, Hendrick mates Larson and Alex Bowman took divided lines around him, and Truex settled in to his final result.
“Well, you gotta win, don’t you?” No. 19 crew chief James Small told NASCAR.com, explaining the risk-reward reasoning behind the strategy play. “We hadn’t been that great on a short run most of the day, and we knew everybody was going to do right-side tires. Really just needed another couple of takers, and nobody came. He said it actually fired off really well. He’s just, he should have wrapped the bottom there on that last lap coming off of (turn) two. And he went up to try and fade and kill that run, and he just got really tight. If he’d just stuck on the bottom, he said he would have been fine.
“So you live and learn, and what, we gave up three places. You look at the 11 car (Hamlin), he ended up back in 11th. So either way, it’s a lottery. It went a lot better than we thought. So anyway, try again next week.”
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Putting aside his victory in the season-opening Busch Light Clash exhibition in Los Angeles, Truex notched his best result of the three-race-old season. He ranks fifth in the Cup Series standings but is still seeking his first points-paying victory since September 2021 (Richmond).
Sunday seemingly inched the team closer to ending that drought, but Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets logged a clean sweep of the top three as Byron and Larson combined to lead 239 of 271 laps.
“Yeah, they were really strong,” Small said. “They were fast to fire off, and then they held on as well. So just looking at it, they just kept turning a little better than us on exit, and that was kind of our weakness all day. That yellow doesn’t come out at the end, and we would’ve wound up around third, and that’s really the best we could do. The 5 and the 24 (Larson and Byron), you know, were kind of in their own league for most of the day. Anyway, it’s a step forward, and yeah, we’ll keep fighting.”