In a wild Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Martin Truex Jr. powered his Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Chevrolet to a fourth-place finish. The result was Truex’s sixth top-five and 15th top-10 finish after 20 Sprint Cup Series races. It was also his best Brickyard 400 finish in 11 career starts.
Truex, who is inching closer to mathematically clinching a Chase playoff berth, ranks fifth in driver points and sixth in the Chase standings. There are six races remaining before the 10-race, 16-driver Chase commences.
When the Brickyard 400 was restarted on Lap 162 for the overtime green-white-checkered finish, Truex was positioned in third place.
“You always want to put yourself in position for a win at the end and that’s what we did today,” said Truex. “We fought hard and stayed patient all day. We got caught on pit road again when the caution came out, but fortunately we had enough time to get back to the front. We had good cars the past four races but had horrible luck. Today it came together and it’s a good feeling to regain momentum.”
After starting the scheduled 160-lap race 13th, it only took Truex two laps on the 2.5-mile oval to move into the top-10. He stayed in the top-10 until Lap 91 when a caution came out while his No. 78 Chevrolet was on pit road for fresh tires and fuel. The untimely caution sent Truex back to 25th place.
“The same thing happened to us last week in New Hampshire and I couldn’t believe it was happening again,” said Truex. “But having a fast car and good pit strategy by Cole (crew chief Cole Pearn) brought us back to the front. When we made our last stop we were around three laps short on fuel, but a number of cautions came out late in the race, which took care of the fuel issue. We finally caught a break.”
The race winner was Kyle Busch. Rounding out the top-10 in order were: Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, Truex, Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski.
FRR PR
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