Martin Truex Jr. finally achieved his long-awaited victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Monday, and he did so in an impressive manner by dominating the field.
Martin Truex Jr. won the postponed Crayon 301 in Loudon, New Hampshire, on Monday marking his first victory at the flat oval, capping up a NASCAR Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Truex won the Crayon 301 by winning both stages and leading 254 of the 301 total laps. This was his third victory of the year and first in 30 starts at New Hampshire respectively.
From the moment the green flag went up, the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was the most superior vehicle in the field. Truex claimed the lead for the first time on lap 2. He faced not much opposition for the top spot the rest of the afternoon.
However, after the eighth caution period of the race which was brought on by Bell’s incident, Truex had to prevail over Joey Logano and Kyle Larson in a nine-lap shootout and eventually Logano lost against Truex by 0.394 seconds.
In the final 25 laps, there were two cautions as the pack tried to catch Truex. The first occurred with 22 laps remaining after a crash involving Alex Bowman, Ty Gibbs, and Erik Jones on the backstretch, while the last occurred with 14 laps left following Christopher Bell’s spin and contact with the wall on Turn 4.
This comes after Sunday morning’s 300-lapper at the Magic Mile was postponed due to rain,. That left Bell and Truex as the front-runners for the noon Monday start.
Truex had led 916 laps ahead of the Loudon race, the most for any driver without a victory at NHMS, yet he still raced exceptionally despite losing a little bit of control in the closing stages.
Third place went to Kyle Larson as Kevin Harvick placed fourth in his final race in New Hampshire. Brad Keselowski finished fifth overall. Denny Hamlin came in seventh after Tyler Reddick in sixth as Bubba Wallace finished in eighth. The ninth-place finisher was Austin Dillon while Chase Briscoe rounded out the top 10.
After being penalized for running over equipment on pit road, Ryan Blaney lost the chance to contend for a top-five finish and finished 22nd. With 31 laps remaining, the team lost two tires and received the penalty after running over the air hose.
Busch crossed the finish line with significant right-side damage after striking the Turn 4 wall, while Truex had gained ground on William Byron and easily won Stage 1 by two seconds.
Busch crossed the finish line last with major right-side damage after striking the Turn 4 wall, while Truex had to past William Byron and easily won Stage 1 by two seconds.
Aric Almirola, Larson, Logano, and Harvick all resumed in the first two rows after the third yellow after they only changed two tires as opposed to four, while Truex was in fifth place. Almirola, however, suffered a serious crash after the restart and Truex eventually drove to another stage victory by edging Larson by almost a second after overtaking him on Lap 185.
Bell, who started on pole eventually finished in 29th place after leading the first lap of the race and then had to battle from behind for the majority of the afternoon as he had to make a second pit stop at the end of the first stage. Since the crew wasn’t sure if the wheels were tightly secured after Bell emerged third from pit road, he had to rush back to his pit stall.
In the second stage, Bell came in at number 10 and in the final stage he advanced as high as fifth. Before he crashed, he was running sixth.
In the postponed race on Monday there were eight caution flags and 13 lead changes among nine drivers.
