Martin Truex, Jr. returned to his 2017 championship form on Sunday with a dominating victory at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. The Furniture Row Racing driver started from the pole, swept the first two stages and led a race-high 125 laps en route to his 16th Cup Series win and first this year in defense of his title.
Truex passed Kyle Busch for his final lead 32 laps from the finish and kept the #78 Toyota in front the rest of the way, beating runner-up Kyle Larson to the finish by more than 11 seconds. Busch took third place with Team Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano completing the top five.
For Truex, the win caps a steady recovery after a disappointing 18th-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500. Since then, he’s had finishes of 5th in Atlanta, 4h in Las Vegas, 5h in Phoenix and now his first victory at Auto Club Speedway. It’s rare for pole winners to win Cup Series races on the two-mile Southern California oval. Truex is just the third to do it since the track first hosted NASCAR in 1997, joining Jimmie Johnson (2008) and Larson last year. Truex’s month-long resurgence has carried him to the top of the Monster Energy Series standings heading into the first short-track race of the season next weekend at Martinsville Speedway. He enjoys a nine-point lead over Busch and is 19 ahead of Logano, who also won Saturday’s X-finity Series race in dominating fashion. In fact, Truex and Logano combined to lead 264 of the 350 laps possible in the two races .
Sunday’s Cup Series race included 16 lead changes among just seven drivers . There were five cautions for 21 laps.
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– story by John Singler
www.mrn.com
Concord, North Carolina
1. Martin Truex, Jr. @ 216 points
2. Kyle Busch (-9)
3. Joey Logano (-19)
4. Brad Keselowski (-33)
5. Ryan Blaney (-35)
6. Denny Hamlin (-40)
7. Kyle Larson (-42)
8. Kevin Harvick (-46)
9. Clint Bowyer (-61)
10. Aric Almirola (-68
For the complete driver standings, please visit the official page on nascar.com.
