{"id":44782,"date":"2017-10-09T13:43:12","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T20:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=44782"},"modified":"2017-10-09T13:43:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T20:43:12","slug":"bowman-and-truex-earn-victories-at-charlotte-motor-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/bowman-and-truex-earn-victories-at-charlotte-motor-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"Bowman and Truex Earn Victories at Charlotte Motor Speedway"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bowman
NASCAR returns home to Charlotte Motor Speedway (Photo by Sarah Crabill\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The stars of both the XFINITY and Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series returned home this weekend as the Chase to the Championship continued at Charlotte Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Drive for the Cure 300<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Bowman
Alex Bowman celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR XFINITY Series Drive for the Cure 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Photo by Streeter Lecka\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the weekend began, it appeared that Tropical Storm Nate would receive the victory in Saturday\u2019s Drive for the Cure 300 XFINITY Series race. After a lengthy rain delay for this primetime race, the green flag finally waved over the No. 18 of Daniel Suarez and the rest of the 40-car field about five hours past the original start time. Although Suarez led most of the opening laps, the No. 20 of Erik Jones took the Stage 1 win. This small victory was short lived, however, as Suarez\u2019s teammate began experiencing troubles with his ride, knocking out this young driver\u2019s hopes to win at his team\u2019s home track.<\/p>\n

Jones’ bad luck gave Suarez the chance to regain his lead as well as the Stage 2 win. Although things were looking up for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, two faulty pit stops would leave the No. 18 driver having to settle for a top-10 position.<\/p>\n

While Joe Gibbs Racing XFINITY Series teams couldn\u2019t find their way to Victory Lane, Chip Ganassi Racing driver Alex Bowman drove his way to his first XFINITY Series win on Saturday night. The driver, who will step into Dale Earnhardt Jr.\u2019s driver shoes next year, led 32 of 200 laps in his first series start to take Drive for The Cure 300 Presented by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true,\u201d said Bowman, who admitted to being slightly rusty in his return to competition. \u201cI\u2019ve got to thank Mr. Hendrick and Chip and everybody that made this possible. It\u2019s been a long time since I\u2019ve raced, so to come here and be as competitive as we were all night, even until that last restart, I was really pleased with how competitive we were.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Bowman celebrated his victory, five other XFINITY Series drivers also had reason to celebrate after clinching spots in the eighth round of the Countdown to the 2017 Championship when points were awarded in the race\u2019s opening two stages. William Byron, Daniel Hemric, Cole Custer, Elliott Sadler and Justin Allgaier all advanced easily in the standings despite some setbacks. Brennan Poole, Matt Tifft and Ryan Reed also moved on, with Reed clinching his spot by a single point over Brendan Gaughan. Michael Annett, Blake Koch and Jeremy Clements joined Gaughan in being eliminated from championship contention on Saturday as the bottom four drivers in the XFINITY postseason field.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bank of America 500<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Bowman
Martin Truex Jr celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While Saturday\u2019s XFINITY Series race winner was a bit of a surprise, the winner of Sunday\u2019s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Bank of America 500 was anything but. The weekend started off with a dud on Friday for the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team after a mix-up in qualifying on Friday would leave Truex starting in the 17th<\/sup> position. Despite this, the series point leader and his team would make up for their faulty start by driving to the front of the field on Lap 234 and taking this lead all the way to yet another season victory.<\/p>\n

Before Truex could find his way to the top, a Freaky Fast driver lead the way 149 of Sunday\u2019s 334-Lap feature race. The No. 4 of Kevin Harvick took both the Stage 1 and 2 wins, but as the event wound down the series leader was back in his usual spot, at the front of the field. Truex survived two late restarts, the last in overtime, to win for a series-best six times this season, the second time at Charlotte and the 13th time in his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe qualified horribly, and I was mad about it,\u201d said Truex. \u201cDespite this rocky start, this was an unbelievable win and a total team effort. You dream about days like today. Every guy on this team did a perfect job, and I couldn\u2019t be prouder of them – and this time of the year is just when you want it to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truex leaves Charlotte with a guaranteed spot in the postseason\u2019s Round of eight and a 34-point lead in the standings over second-place Kyle Larson, who ran 10th on Sunday in one of the race\u2019s fastest cars after two pit road glitches and contact from Kurt Busch\u2019s car during the Lap 325 spin.<\/p>\n

Kyle Busch squandered his advantage in playoff points when he smacked the outside wall in Turn 4 and brought out the fifth caution on Lap 136. With a resulting 29th-place finish, Busch fell from second to sixth in the standings, only 12 points clear of ninth-place Matt Kenseth going into next weekend\u2019s race at Talladega. Only 25 points separate Chase Elliott and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for fourth in the points standings.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned to RacingJunk.com<\/a> as the Countdown to the NASCAR Championship continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stars of both the XFINITY and Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series returned home this weekend as the Chase to the Championship continued at Charlotte Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":44785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3424,3470,5029],"tags":[5428,3113,935,1619,2849,127,41,1632],"class_list":["post-44782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-news","category-racing","tag-2017-nascar-xfinity-series","tag-alex-bowman","tag-charlotte-motor-speedway","tag-ellen-richardson","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-nascar","tag-news","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Charlotte-Feature_NASCAR.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-bEi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44782"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44788,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44782\/revisions\/44788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}