NASCAR at Chicagoland 2016: Winners and Losers from the TMNT 400

Martin Truex Jr. was mired by bad luck in 2016, often losing races he dominated.

Of late, Truex has driven that No. 78 car through the field, and he did that with aplomb Sunday to win the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 400 on a titanic overtime restart to snatch the race and advance to the Round of 12.

The Chase for the Sprint Cup began and was most certainly unkind to many of the Chasers, most notably Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson, but it also served as a boon to Truex, Chase Elliott and the two-headed monster of Team Penske.

The TMNT 400 saw many ups and downs and was by and large a solid start to the playoffs.

The pressure only increases from here, but first we need to make sense of what happened in Joliet, Illinois.

Read on for this week’s winners and losers.

Loser: How Quickly Chris Buescher Fell Down a Lap

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

Anyone with a fully functioning frontal lobe didn’t expect Chris Buescher to compete in the Chase, as in compete for the Sprint Cup. Advancing out of the Round of 16 could be satisfactorily labeled as “pie in the sky.”

But the speed with which Buescher fell down a lap defied logic in the TMNT 400. It wasn’t too long before he fell down a second lap.

From the first wave of that green flag, Buescher’s car proved un-Chase-worthy.

Kudos to Buescher for grinding his way into the Chase, but now that he’s here, he needs to prove he belongs.

It became painfully apparent Buescher indeed does not belong, and with trips to New Hampshire and Dover—tracks where Buescher finished 29th and 18th this season, respectively—his playoff run will end as quickly as it began.

Winner: The Poise of Chase Elliott and the Resurgence of Hendrick Motorsports

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

Chase Elliott and Hendrick Motorsports had a great run in Joliet.

Elliott, for all his skill, led 75 laps, but couldn’t cement the win his and ensure spot in the Round of 12.

It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his pit crew’s fault. Simply put, it was racing, and he stood on the wrong side of other teams’ strategy, namely Ryan Blaney, Carl Edwards and Kasey Kahne, all drivers who elected to stay out on the final restart.

On the overtime restart, Elliott and the other leaders pitted. Elliott’s pit stop was .5 seconds slower than Truex at 12.7 seconds As a result, it put Elliott on the inside of Row 3 instead of the outside of Row 2. There was too much traffic for Elliott to overcome, and he failed to keep pace with the eventual winner.

“Nothing is yours until it’s over,” Elliott told the NBC Sports broadcast after the race. “We know these races don’t go green that long. You’ve got to be able to embrace it and move on. There’s some things you can’t control with the amount of of guys that stayed out.”

Elliott led 75 laps, and if you add Johnson’s 118 laps led, that’s a killer 193 for HMS. On top of that, HMS placed three of its cars inside the top 10 too.

It appears the speed is there, and this kind of effort suggests Elliott—and even the despondent Johnson—should make the Round of 12.

“We were fast,” said Elliott. “That’s something to be happy about. We can move to Loudon with some motivation and get going.”

Loser: Jimmie Johnson Speeds on Pit Road

Steve Helber/Associated Press

For a time, it appeared as though Jimmie Johnson would exit Chicagoland a big, big winner.

He led 118 laps and looked every bit a winner while he battled teammate Chase Elliott for the lead.

That prompted NBC Sports’ Jeff Burton to say:

"

We haven’t seen this kind of dominant speed out of Jimmie Johnson in some time. He has been open about it, I spoke to him recently and he said, ‘Look, we don’t have the speed we need right now. We’re hoping it will come, and if it doesn’t we’re going to try and find other ways to advance through these playoff rounds.’ Two weeks ago, we saw the 48 team’s speed light up, but they weren’t able to execute. So far today, they’ve got speed and are executing.

"

Then in the last round of green-flag pit stops and after a solid 13.4-second tire change, Johnson got bagged for speeding.

“There is no f-----g way!” he radioed in.

Johnson went from P2 to a lap down. He’d finish 12^th.

After the race, Johnson told NBC Sports, “I’m very proud of this team. We’re digging, I can’t believe I got in trouble leaving the pits. Ahhhhh, I’ll ram my head in a wall. Should have been a top-five day. Just screwed up.”

Johnson had never won at Chicagoland, and the speeding penalty assured he’d go another year without a win in Joliet.

The silver lining, of course, was how fast he drove through the first half of the race, being able to lead the most laps. He’ll need to bottle up that part of the race and quickly put that speeding penalty—and its ramifications—far in the rear view.

Winner: The Quietly Brilliant Day for Team Penske

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Team Penske had a quiet day, yet it placed its two drivers inside the top five.

Joey Logano crushed the final restart to surpass Elliott and lead the charge for the Captain, ultimately finishing second behind Truex.

“A lot of fun,” Logano told NBC Sports after the race. “Overall, we brought a fast car and had awesome pit stops and maximized every spot on the race track. I’m very proud of the way we attacked and executed today.”

He went on to say that if they bring another great car, great pit stops and the same degree of execution to Loudon—his home track—there’s no reason to think he can’t record another top five.

The same could be said for Brad Keselowski, who finished fifth in the TMNT 400. With so much drama tied up with HMS cars and Harvick’s fall, seeing the No. 2 pop up in the top five was a bit jarring.

For both Logano and Kez, having such a quiet top five suggests a coolness that should serve them well heading to Loudon and Dover.

Loser: Kevin Harvick's Inability to Recover

Terry Renna/Associated Press

We won’t know for a few days Harvick’s detailed impressions of his race, but one thing we know for sure: He hated it.

He declined his post-race interview, which is about as childish it gets. Be a pro.

But what got Harvick all heated was a round of bad luck nobody could have forecast. He had just completed a green-flag pit stop when the caution flag waved. He failed to reach the start-finish line before Truex, then the race leader, hit the yellow line.

As a result, Harvick went down a lap and never recovered it. This happened on Lap 56, and he still couldn’t put his car in the right position. Again, we won’t know what happened to that car.

“The car fell off, never got back on track,” NBC Sports' Kyle Petty said during the broadcast. “They had bad luck.”

The No. 4 team started at the back of the field and charged up over 20 spots and into the top 10. It was a masterful bout of driving that lasted all of 35 laps.

Harvick is just one point back of 12^th on the Chase Grid, so there’s no need to panic.

Winner: 12.2 Seconds

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

This much we knew: There would be an overtime restart, and the leaders were pitting.

Truex had proved that he had a competitive car, not one of those purely dominant cars, but a winning one. What he needed was hammer-slam pit stop to put him on the outside of Row 2 for the final restart.

His team went to work and threw down a 12.2-second pit stop, a half-second better than Elliott, then the leader, and claimed the perfect spot behind Blaney in the No. 21 car.

The four fresh tires and track position afforded by Truex’s pit crew was enough to power him to Victory Lane.

“Oh my goodness, Darlington all over again,” Truex told NBC Sports after the race. “The racing gods don’t want us leading too much, make it difficult for us. Man, this feels good. We got more races to win. What can I say? This is the way we wanted to start it off.”

Truex had a tire go down early in the race, but even down a lap he charged back onto the lead lap and even survived what appeared to be an intentional bump from a frustrated Harvick.

“Just don’t give up, just keep going, it’s a long way to go at that point,” said Truex. “On the one hand, here’s the bad luck biting us again, but on the other it was early. Total team effort and that’s what it’s going to take to win a championship.”

There’s no better way to start the Chase, and for a driver who made it to Homestead without winning a race in the Chase in 2015, this win—his first ever in the playoffs—will no doubt boost his team’s confidence heading to the Round of 12 and beyond.