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.

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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

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