KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Martin Truex Jr. was once again snake-bitten by a late-race caution.
The veteran NASCAR Cup Series driver was tracking down Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin late in the going of the AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway Sunday night (May 5). He had mowed his way through the field to get up to second, the fastest car on track, but then the caution flag flew for a spin by Kyle Busch with seven laps remaining.
Truex then dropped to 10th after taking four tires on the final caution flag stop that followed; nine cars took two tires and came out ahead of him. The driver of the No. 19 Toyota still passed a ton of cars, but with the race resuming as a two-lap shootout, Truex only got to fourth.
“I don’t know, just frustrating,” Truex said. “We were looking really good until that last caution, as always. I don’t know what we need to do to close one out, but the guys did a good job with our Auto-Owners Camry.
“We were in position to steal one there. Definitely had the best car, but fought hard all night, made good decisions and made the car better and better. That was great, but always stinks when you see the lead and can’t get it.”
Truex’s crew chief James Small was equally as disappointed.
“Yeah, no doubt, we were gonna win the race for sure,” Small told Frontstretch. “It’s just another race with a late-race caution that we kind of get screwed by, but it is what it is.”
It’s the second race this season where Truex seemed poised to win only to have a caution thwart it. At Richmond Raceway in March, he was dominating when a yellow flag came out late. That time, he lost because Hamlin got by on the overtime restart.
The circumstances here were different, but the theme of having one taken away remained the same.
“It was ours to lose at that point, and the caution came out,” Truex said of the Kansas finish. “Kind of typical, you know, anytime I feel like we have a chance to win one of these things we have a late caution and it doesn’t go — I guess we should’ve tried two tires, I don’t know. But yeah, didn’t work out.”
The scoresheet won’t show how good Truex was at the end of the race. He didn’t lead a single lap and just finished seventh and fifth in the stages.
But in the final run, many drivers were saving fuel or had used their tires up. That is where Truex came on strong. He was…
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