Yahoo Sports Martin Truex Jr. wins Coca-Cola 600
The right side of Martin Truex Jr.’s car was all beat up but it didn’t matter. Truex won the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway anyway.
Truex made a four-wide pass for the win with less than five laps to go to get his third win of 2019 and beat Joey Logano to the finish line as Denny Hamlin crashed on the last lap.
The win is Truex’s third of 2019 and his second win in the 600. He had the race’s best car despite a vehicle that was damaged in the first stage of the race thanks to a flat tire. Truex caused a (very lenient) caution in the first stage while he was leading the race when his car brushed the wall after his right front tire went flat.
You could argue that NASCAR shouldn’t have thrown the caution after Truex’s crash. Especially since he kept going. But the series did, and Truex was able to stay on the lead lap.
The damage was also apparently no big deal as the speed Truex showed before that caution carried over into the final three stages of the race. Truex still led a race-high 116 laps and was in the lead when the race’s final caution came out for Brad Keselowski’s spin onto pit road.
Truex ties Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski
The win means Truex is now tied with teammate Kyle Busch and Keselowski for the most wins of any driver in 2019. And it also means that Joe Gibbs Racing has won eight of the first 13 races in 2019. The Toyota team is establishing itself as the team to beat so far in the Cup Series despite an otherwise lackluster performance on Sunday night.
Busch finished third, but two-time 2019 winner Hamlin had multiple tire issues before his final lap crash. Erik Jones brought out the first caution of the race when he had a right-front tire failure less than 40 laps in and Matt DiBenedetto, who drives for JGR-aligned Leavine Family Racing, also crashed out of the race after a tire problem in the first stage.
NASCAR very quick on the cautions
NASCAR’s race officials were overly cautious throughout Sunday’s race and clearly set a precedent when throwing a caution when Truex brushed the wall.
A caution came out in the final stage of the race when Hamlin had a tire problem — but didn’t hit the wall or even spun — and a caution was thrown when Brad Keselowski lazily spun onto pit road and immediately straightened out the car with 10 laps to go to set up the final restart.
It’s unfair to say that NASCAR’s quick caution trigger gifted Truex the win. He had a car that was fast enough to work his way back to the front in the longest race of the year. But it’s not unfair to say that the quick caution after he had a flat tire at the beginning of the race is helped contribute to his win or that NASCAR didn’t show caution restraint Sunday night that it’s shown in previous races.
Multi-car crashes are back?
Before Sunday’s race there was just one multi-car crash for a caution at an intermediate track. There is no longer just one multi-car crash at an intermediate-sized track after Sunday’s race. Five crashes involved multiple cars on Sunday as the 600 tried to reverse a trend of few crashes in the Cup Series.
The biggest crash involved Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon as Larson’s spin collected Clint Bowyer, Dillon, and his brother Ty Dillon in the final stage. Larson crashed out of Sunday night’s race a week after winning the All-Star Race at the same track.
The 600 featured five cautions that involved more than one car. We’ll see over the coming weeks if that’s an aberration or the start of a trend. But either way, it felt a bit more normal to see a NASCAR race at a non-short track that involved more than just single-car spins.
One of the multi-car crashes also involved Truex when Bayley Currey, driving a car that was laps down at the time, went spinning off Truex’s bumper and slammed into the inside wall.
Sunday’s race featured 16 cautions and took nearly 5 hours to complete. It was the longest 600 since the 2005 race took 5:13 to finish.
Full results
1. Martin Truex Jr.
2. Joey Logano
3. Kyle Busch
4. Chase Elliott
5. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
6. Chris Buescher
7. Alex Bowman
8. Jimmie Johnson
9. William Byron
10. Kevin Harvick
11. Aric Almirola
12. Corey LaJoie
13. Ryan Blaney
14. Paul Menard
15. David Ragan
16. Ryan Newman
17. Denny Hamlin
18. Daniel Suarez
19. Brad Keselowski
20. Matt Tifft
21. Daniel Hemric
22. Michael McDowell
23. Ty Dillon
24. Clint Bowyer
25. Bubba Wallace
26. Parker Kligerman
27. Kurt Busch
28. Quin Houff
29. BJ McLeod
30. Reed Sorenson
31. Ryan Preece
32. Joey Gase
33. Kyle Larson
34. Austin Dillon
35. Bayley Currey
36. Ross Chastain
37. Landon Cassill
38. Cody Ware
39. Matt DiBenedetto
40. Erik Jones
Top 20 in the points standings
1. Kyle Busch, 519
2. Joey Logano, 519
3. Kevin Harvick, 478
4. Chase Elliott, 470
5. Brad Keselowski, 459
6. Martin Truex Jr., 438
7. Denny Hamlin, 433
8. Kurt Busch, 400
9. Clint Bowyer, 370
10. Ryan Blaney, 369
11. Alex Bowman, 368
12. Aric Almirola, 360
13. Daniel Suarez, 334
14. Jimmie Johnson, 324
15. William Byron, 316
16. Erik Jones, 309
17. Kyle Larson, 309
18. Ryan Newman, 305
19. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., 299
20. Paul Menard, 290
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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