New Jersey native Martin Truex Jr. broke a 54-race winless streak in a seven-lap dash to win Monday afternoon’s NASCAR Cup Series Wurth 400 at Dover Motor Speedway in Dover, Del.
The season’s 11th race was postponed a day due to a rainy weekend at the concrete track.
Truex pitted after Joey Logano’s wreck with 13 laps left. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver took two tires, along with Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell. Ross Chastain chose to take four.
Truex raced away to record his fourth Dover win in 33 starts — three of them on a Monday — and the 32nd of his career.
Chastain finished second, followed by Blaney, William Byron and Denny Hamlin.
“I felt like we’ve been close a bunch of times, and we gave some away, that’s for sure,” said Truex, who grew up 2 1/2 hours away in Mayetta, N.J., and calls Dover his home track. “But it was a great call by (crew chief) James (Small) to take two. I was able to get a pretty good restart and get Blaney there. He raced me hard but clean.”
It was a fine weekend for the Truex family; Martin’s younger brother, Ryan, won the Xfinity race Saturday.
Polesitter Kyle Busch earned the top position due to a metric system used by NASCAR, but his day went south after leading the first 23 laps.
After being caught speeding on pit road and sent to the rear, the Richard Childress Racing driver got into the back of Ty Dillon’s No. 77 Chevrolet.
Busch’s No. 8 Chevy received front-end damage while Trackhouse Racing’s Daniel Suarez retired his No. 99 Camaro from the 400-lap event.
Kyle Larson struck Brennan Poole’s No. 15 Ford as it slid up the track after being spun by Chastain’s No. 1 Chevy to force the fourth caution on Lap 81. Larson was running fifth at the time in the fastest car as the day warmed and the sun came out.
“I felt like I just got ran over for no reason, 80 laps into the race,” Poole said of the shove. “Doesn’t make any sense to me. But that’s something he’s been known to do here recently. Probably needs to get his butt whooped.”
At the end of the first 120 laps, Byron held off Hamlin by less than half a second to notch his sixth stage win.
Chastain won Stage 2 at Lap 250, but the Hendrick Motorsports driver regained the lead by winning the race off pit road.
–Field Level Media
