martin truex jr Tag

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The countdown to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs is on, with just 10 races remaining in the regular season to set the field of contenders that will fight for the championship later this fall. Kicking off the summer stretch will be Chicagoland Speedway and Sunday’s running of the Camping World 400, which returns to its mid-summer roots for the second year in a row after several years as the Playoff opener. The track, which joined the circuit in 2001, only hosts the CupRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer SONOMA, California — Hungry for his second Toyota/Save Mart 350 victory, Kyle Busch was a man on a mission to beat Martin Truex, Jr., but the bid fell 1.861 seconds short Sunday at Sonoma Raceway. With fresher tires, Busch’s caved-in No. 18 M&Ms Hazelnut Toyota Camry kept cutting down his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate’s 8.3 second lead with 20 laps remaining. Several laps later, Busch’s deficit just kept decreasing and the question would now become can he pass Truex? Lapped traffic would also play a pivotalRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service SONOMA, Calif. – Dominant in defense of last year’s victory in the Toyota/Save Mart 350, Martin Truex Jr. held off Kyle Busch, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, to win Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event at Sonoma Raceway. With three-lap fresher tires after the final set of green-flag pit stops at the 2.52-mile road course—which for the first time since 1997 featured use of the carousel connecting Turns 4 and 7—Busch closed an 8.269-second gap to slightly more than a second over theRead More

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer SONOMA, California — The return of the “Carousel” wasn’t the sole subject of both Friday practice sessions for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. Instead, all eyes were on both Kyle Larson and last year’s winner Martin Truex, Jr. Both competitors set blistering pace on a the dirty track surface, but the sessions proved to be relatively tamed. On the opposite end, some competitors such as Bubba Wallace and Cody Ware, struggled in both sessions as it pertained of finding a proper groove to getRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor After getting to enjoy a much needed week off, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series is back in business with a little road course racing. This week, the series makes the trek out to California wine country to take on Sonoma Raceway, a 12-turn technical road course situated about 30 miles north of San Francisco. This week’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 consists of 90 laps, which calculates out to 226.8 miles, or 365 kilometers. Over the years, the course at Sonoma Raceway has gone through aRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Given the statistics, you might think Joey Logano ran away with Monday’s rain-delayed Firekeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Yes, Logano led 163 of 203 laps at the two-mile track in the Irish Hills. He had the fastest car in qualifying on Saturday and the fastest car in the 15th Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event of the season. But after a late caution for Erik Jones’ spin into the infield grass below Turn 2, Logano needed overtime to seal the win. He neededRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service CONCORD, N.C. – Martin Truex Jr. survived an early brush with the outside wall and a frenetic restart with five laps left to win Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. On a race that featured 16 cautions—most since the record 22 in 2005—Truex made a four-wide pass to the inside coming off Turn 2 on Lap 396 of 400 at the 1.5-mile track and beat runner-up Joey Logano to the finish line by .330 seconds. The victory was Truex’s third of theRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service CONCORD, N.C. – Though he didn’t get into his pit stall as quickly as he would have liked in the unique Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race qualifying format, Clint Bowyer had enough speed in his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford to earn the pole position for Saturday night’s marquee event at Charlotte Motor Speedway (at 8 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Though he hasn’t won a pole for a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race since he won from theRead More

By David Morgan, Associate Editor The weekend before Memorial Day marks the beginning of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series traditional two-week stop at NASCAR’s home base of Charlotte, North Carolina and the 1.5-mile quad oval that is Charlotte Motor Speedway. First up on the two-week stopover in the Queen City is the Monster Energy All-Star Race, a non-points event that has served up more than its fair share of exciting moments in its 34-year history. What is now the All-Star Race began as “The Winston” in 1985 and wasRead More

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service KANSAS CITY, Kan. – After Friday afternoon’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series qualifying session at Kansas Speedway, the question “What’s wrong with the Stewart-Haas cars?” may be a dead issue. Hurtling around the 1.5-mile track in 30.131 seconds (179.217 mph), Kevin Harvick led a four-car Stewart-Haas Racing sweep of time trials for Saturday’s Digital Ally 400 (7:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Harvick was .083 seconds faster than teammate Aric Almirola (178.725 mph), who in turned topped Clint Bowyer (178.324 mph) byRead More