{"id":95527,"date":"2024-04-02T15:51:11","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T22:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=95527"},"modified":"2024-04-02T15:51:11","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T22:51:11","slug":"truex-jr-leads-most-richmond-laps-finishes-4th-and-keeps-points-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/truex-jr-leads-most-richmond-laps-finishes-4th-and-keeps-points-lead\/","title":{"rendered":"Truex Jr. Leads Most Richmond Laps, Finishes 4th and Keeps Points Lead"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Denny Halin only led 18 laps but the ost important one earned him the win – Getty Images photo for NASCAR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you race on a bullring track, like the .75-mile Richmond Raceway oval where NASCAR held its most recent Cup Series contest, won by Virginia native Denny Hamlin for his 53rd NASCAR Cup Series victory and fifth at his \u201chome\u201d track, there\u2019s bound to be sore cars, sore egos and the occasional revenge for misconstrued actions.<\/p>\n

And so it went on Sunday night, after Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Martin Truex Jr., having led the most laps (228) in this 407-lap Toyota Owners 400 race, had the ignominy of having his No. 19 Camry XSE moved out of the way starting the two-lap overtime following the race\u2019s final caution. The last yellow came for an incident between the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Kyle Larson kraces for Hendrick Motorsports and 23XI Racing\u2019s Bubba Wallace in his Toyota Camry XSE. Truex Jr. lost the lead on pit road and then was pushed nearly to the wall by both Hamlin Larson as the final green flags flew.<\/p>\n

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Martin Truex Jr. may have the points lead but was devastated not to win at Richmond – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the cooldown lap, Truex Jr. edged the door of Larson, who\u2019d pushed him wide on the restart. He then tried to run down Hamlin and slammed into his teammate’s rear bumper before finally entering pit road. Truex Jr. was certain Hamlin had jumped the final green and wanted to let him know how he felt. \u201cJust got beat out of the pits\u2026 he [Hamlin] jumped the start and then he just used me up into Turn 1. It definitely sucks,\u201d Truex Jr. said, \u201cbut a good solid day and another car capable of winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin was not about to accept blame for what happened to him. Of course he was trying to keep a lead he\u2019d gained on pit road but he wasn\u2019t trying to play any games. \u201cI went right at it, for sure,\u201d he said. \u201cThe 19 was rolling a couple miles an hour quicker than I was. I wasn\u2019t going to let them have an advantage that my team earned on pit road. Certainly made sure I went to my nose, got there. But I took off right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASCAR, of course, looked at all angles of FOXs broadcast and it was former racer and current NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer who reminded everyone, \u201cWe reviewed that. We looked at it. Obviously, the 11 was the control vehicle,\u201d as they raced the final pair of laps. \u201cIt was awful close, but we deemed it to be a good restart.\u201d Even if NASCAR had decided the restart needed to be remedied, Truex Jr. would not have won this race as he was fourth at the checkers.<\/p>\n

Team owner Joe Gibbs played Solomon after the race was done and the penalty given. \u201cYou\u2019re happy for Denny, certainly, and everything that happened for him, but then you see Martin, how hard he fought for the win, how much he wanted it,\u201d Gibbs mused. \u201cThat\u2019s part of our sport; it\u2019s really hard. You really feel for them when they go through a night like Martin went through this night. You just feel for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

No doubt everyone will sit down, hash it out and get ready for another short-track battle this weekend in Martinsville, VA, a .526-mile oval. This is the eighth round of the season, second short-track of the year and another 400-lap battle to the checkers. Truex Jr., a three-time Martinsville victor, goes into the event with \u201cno harm; no foul\u201d to his name. With his fourth-place result, he\u2019s got momentum, the points lead and an unmatched need to stay at the front.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely high confidence going into Martinsville compared to the first year of this [NextGen] car,\u201d Truex Jr. said. \u201cTo be able to go run like we did at Richmond, it gives me a lot of confidence going forward that our Martinsville stuff should be good. I love going there; it\u2019s been a really good track for us our the years – aside from the first year of the NextGen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truex Jr. leads Kyle Larson\u2019s Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 by 14 points with Denny Hamlin 18 in arrears. Ty Gibbs (Toyota), Ryan Blaney (Ford), Christopher Bell (Toyota), teammates William Byron and Chase Elliott (Chevy), Ross Chastain (Chevy) and Tyler Reddick\u2019s Toyota (-71) complete the top 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you race on a bullring track, like the .75-mile Richmond Raceway oval where NASCAR held its most recent Cup Series contest, won by Virginia native Denny Hamlin for his 53rd NASCAR Cup Series victory and fifth at his \u201chome\u201d track, there\u2019s bound to be sore cars, sore egos and the occasional revenge for misconstrued actions.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":95528,"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","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[772,3424,3470,5029],"tags":[1531,3355,683,2849,2652,127,4437,5921,10170,10273],"class_list":["post-95527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-circle-track-racing","category-nascar","category-news","category-racing","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-joe-gibbs-racing","tag-kyle-larson","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-martinsville-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-richmond-raceway","tag-toyota-camry-xse","tag-toyota-owners-400"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/final-Richmond-restart-Getty-Images-for-NASCAR-min-e1712098262240.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-oQL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95527","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\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95527"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95534,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95527\/revisions\/95534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}