Sunday, May 14, 2017

Truex Wins at Kansas

Originally written for CLNS Media.

Martin Truex Jr. won the GoBowling.com 400 from Kansas Speedway on Saturday night.

Truex led a race-high 104 laps on Saturday, but he did not have the most dominant car at the end of the race.  Truex had to run down Ryan Blaney over the final 60 laps, and he was able to hold off the field over the final two restarts.

Sean Gardner/Getty Images
Truex said he needed to keep the lead over the final restarts or he wouldn’t have had enough time to get to victory lane.

“I felt like if I could get out front on those restarts I’d be fine,” Truex said.  “If I came out second or third after a lap or two, it took us awhile to get good enough to pass those guys.”

Truex made a daring move on one of the final restarts to split the lead cars, and he said he was worried something would go wrong over the final laps.

“Any of those restarts we could have gotten beat on, something could have happened,” Truex said.  “There’s no guarantee that you can make it happen, but we did.”

Blaney had a dominant car throughout the middle of the race, winning segment two.  Blaney’s car was good over the short run, but he was run down by Truex over the long run late in the race.  Blaney said he was disappointed with his fourth-place finish.

“We weren’t very good long run; we had a great short run car,” Blaney said.  “Thought, at worst, we should have finished second, but I think it says a lot for this team to go out and…get back on track.”

The race was red-flagged with 70 laps to go after a scary wreck involving Joey Logano, Danica Patrick and Aric Almirola.  Logano and Patrick got together, and Almirola slammed into them while they spun on the track.  Almirola was alert after the accident, but he had to be cut from his car by track workers.  Almirola was air lifted to the University of Kansas Medical Center for further observation.

Unofficial results:
1. Martin Truex Jr.
2. Brad Keselowski
3. Kevin Harvick
4. Ryan Blaney
5. Kyle Busch
6. Kyle Larson
7. Daniel Suarez
8. Jamie McMurray
9. Clint Bowyer
10. Trevor Bayne
11. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
12. Matt Kenseth
13. Michael McDowell
14. Ty Dillon
15. Kasey Kahne
16. Austin Dillon
17. David Ragan
18. Chris Buescher
19. Kurt Busch
20. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
21. Landon Cassill
22. Erik Jones
23. Denny Hamlin
24. Jimmie Johnson
25. Reed Sorenson
26. Cole Whitt
27. Corey LaJoie
28. Timmy Hill
29. Chase Elliott
30. AJ Allmendinger
31. Carl Long
32. Matt DiBenedetto
33. Jeffrey Earnhardt
34. Gray Gaulding
35. Paul Menard
36. Danica Patrick
37. Joey Logano
38. Aric Almirola
39. Derrike Cope
40. Ryan Newman

Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

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