Martin Truex Jr. won his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race from Kansas Speedway Saturday night, surging into the lead following a late-race restart with just two laps to go.
Truex took the win after leading a race-high 104 of 267 laps. Lined up against polesitter Ryan Blaney for the restart, Truex got a big launch around the outside on the 1.5-mile track, putting a sizable gap between him and the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford driver before taking the checkered flag.
Blaney, who had battled with Truex for the lead for much of the night, looked well positioned to take the win after beating Truex off pit road under the 13th of a record-tying 15 cautions on Lap 245. However after leading 83 laps, Blaney found his car a bit loose on the final two restarts and struggled for grip.
“I felt that we had a great short run car tonight, and I thought that was going to play right into our hands at the end,” Blaney told NASCAR.com pot-race. “The 78 (Truex) got us on that restart somehow. I don’t know.”
The raced was stopped for for 27 minutes, 41 seconds for track cleanup after Joey Logano, Danica Patrick and Aric Almirola were involved in a major wreck. The coming together was sparked when Logano’s Ford blew a tire, which sent him hard into the side of Patrick’s Chevrolet before Almirola slid into Logano. Almirola, who had to be extracted from the car, suffered a fractured vertebra and was subsequently released from hospital.
The next race of the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series will be the Monster Energy Open and All-Star races held from Charlotte Motor Speedway. Click here for a full schedule for the All-Star race and here for full results from Kansas.
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