Martin Truex Jr.'s Domination Drains Drama out of a Feel-Good Story in Charlotte
Martin Truex Jr. outran his luck at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and nothing else came even close to stopping him in the Coca-Cola 600.
Only once in the whole race did another car (Jimmie Johnson's Chevrolet) pass Truex's at speed.
"Well, he passed me for about 100 feet," Truex said, nonplussed, afterward.
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It was a wonderful story...and a moribund race. A week after Joey Logano captured a spirited, if muddled, Sprint All-Star Race on the same track, Truex snuffed out optimism in the nicest way possible.
"The Coke 600 is one of the races everybody wants to win," Truex said. "It's so huge. ... These are the races that define drivers' careers...But above all, for a guy like me to win a race like this is a big deal."
The victory was the fourth of Truex's checkered career, and it probably ought to count as at least two. He led a record number of laps (392) and miles (588), and since the Memorial Day weekend marathon is NASCAR's only race of more than 500 miles, it followed unavoidably that he led more laps in a single race than any other driver in history.
The notion that the Sprint Cup Series is at its all-time high in quality of competition took a bumpy ride in a back seat. Rain skirted but never enveloped the track, and it seemed clear in hindsight that only weather could have beaten Truex and his streaking Toyota. His first Charlotte victory placed him firmly in the 1.5-mile track's annals as being both the fastest (160.655 mph average) and most dominant.
While TV commentators talked about the track changing at night, and others making sage adjustments, and tried in desperation to keep the viewers at home awake, Truex kept pressing his considerable advantage. As a stock car race, it had all the drama of the Invasion of Grenada.
Those buffeted about in Truex's wake were left to wonder why.
| Driver | Wins | Points Ranking | Laps Led |
| Kevin Harvick | 1 | 1 | 688 |
| Jimmie Johnson | 2 | 2 | 224 |
| Kyle Busch | 3 | 3 | 679 |
| Carl Edwards | 2 | 5 | 653 |
| Brad Keselowski | 2 | 6 | 129 |
| Martin Truex Jr. | 1 | 7 | 809 |
| Matt Kenseth | 1 | 10 | 398 |
| Denny Hamlin | 1 | 11 | 128 |
"Well, I saw him for about 50 miles or 75 miles. The rest of the night I never saw him. I was back there swatting flies in the middle of the pack. I didn't have a lot of time to see the (No.) 78," Kevin Harvick, who finished second, said.
“I kind of felt like he was playing with us," Johnson, who finished third, said.
“We had our own battle to worry about. There were times that we were racing him up front for the lead on restarts. We’d run with him for a while, and then eventually, on the long run, he just took off," Joey Logano, who finished ninth, said.
"As long as he stays out front, he can win these things. These cars are like that, but they’ve got something figured out, too," Greg Biffle, who finished 11th, said.
The above reflect only a few highlights, or, for the considerable portion of the world outside Truex Nation, lowlights. It wasn't sufficient for most just to spend the better part of four hours marveling at the wonder of it all.
A contrast naturally exists between the shortest of all races and the longest, but the most remarkable aspect of the 600 was that it took place on the same track as the Sprint All-Star Race and only eight nights later. NASCAR had used that unofficial event for experimentation on new aerodynamic regulations, which, in marked contrast to a format that many found confusing, worked.
So...NASCAR abandoned them for the real race. If they were concerned about altering the balance of competition, they shouldn't have been. Truex's masterful performance did more altering than they could have imagined.
Truex is not unmindful of the possibilities that lie before him: "I just feel like this is one of those dream teams that, if you could stay together for five or six or seven years, you could start doing stuff like Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus did...We want to win championships. We want to win races. We want to win every single week."
Now the scene shifts to Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania, where Truex...won last year.
What happened in all the races in between?
Truex fell about 18 inches shy of winning the Daytona 500, where Denny Hamlin nipped him at the finish line. He dominated Kansas Speedway on May 7 until an unusual mechanical problem caused a wheel to loosen.
Nothing like this, though. Truex destroyed a record for laps led in the Coke (then World) 600 that had been set by Jim Paschal in 1967. In the season's first 12 races, Truex led a total of 417 laps, just 25 more than he led in the 13th alone.
Is it a sign of things to come? Is a one-race earthquake enough to send the competition cascading into the sea? Probably not. Surely not. If so, God help us.
The rotten race was a ripened story. Truex was overdue. He drives for a team that, while heavily supplied and assisted by Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota Racing Development, fields only one car and is headquartered in Denver, as in, Colorado, as in, half a continent away from everyone else.
Barney Visser, who owns both Furniture Row the business and Furniture Row Racing, seems an unlikely candidate for a Bond villain. To all appearances, he is quiet and unassuming. The team's headquarters are functional and modern, not perched above some craggy Rocky Mountain cliff with lightning flashing about.
It is tempting, in the aftermath of the Truex landslide, to overstate its impact. In part, this is because understating it is impossible.
Even Truex, in radio communication with his crew that Fox Sports replayed, said it was hard to pass.
How would he know?
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All quotes are taken from NASCAR media, team and manufacturer sources unless otherwise noted.
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