It took 24 more hours than he had originally hoped, but Martin Truex Jr. took the lead late, held off Ross Chastain on a late restart and won the NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway, snapping a 54-race winless streak.
The win is Truex’s fourth at Dover. Three of those four have come on a Monday. The track is also the site of Truex’s first career Cup win back in 2007.
The win also completes the brotherly weekend sweep, as his brother Ryan won his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series race on Saturday (April 29). Even more special, it’s the Truex brothers’ home track on the national NASCAR circuit, just 130 miles or so away from their hometown of Mayetta, N.J.
Chastain finished second, followed by Ryan Blaney, William Byron and Denny Hamlin rounding out the top five.
Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher and Josh Berry (substituting for the injured Alex Bowman) completed the top 10, respectively.
Following the postponement of the race from Sunday (April 30) to Monday (May 1), the green flag fell around noon local time, and Kyle Busch dominated the first 20 laps from the pole until the competition caution came out. Busch was then tagged for speeding on pit road and had to start in the back. This proved costly for Busch.
The caution flew immediately on the lap 28 restart for Noah Gragson, who had spun off of turn 2 – he would be parked a few laps later for failing to meet minimum speed.
A few laps following that restart, Daniel Suarez got loose, slapped the outside wall and then spun across traffic into the inside wall. As the field stacked up to avoid the spinning No. 99, Busch ran into the back of Ty Dillon, spinning him into the outside wall before backing his No. 77 hard into the inside wall. BJ McLeod was also collected in the wreck.
On lap 81, Chastain spun Brennan Poole going into turn 1, who spun back up the track and crashed hard into the outside wall, collecting an innocent Kyle Larson in the process.
“I did not mean to do that,” Chastain told his team on the radio.
Poole and Larson, however, felt the opposite. Said Larson on his radio, “What a (expletive) idiot! Ross just (expletive) wrecked him. We’re in the first stage!”
“I felt like I just got run over for no reason, 80 laps into the race,” added Poole in an interview with FOX Sports. “Doesn’t make any sense to me, but I guess that’s something he’s been known to do (in the Cup…
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