LOUDON, N.H. — Matt Kenseth and Martin Truex Jr. had a tight battle for several laps during the Sprint Cup race Sunday at New Hampshire.
It appeared that Truex could have used the front bumper at times a little more than he did.
But Truex’s driving code told him not to, that Truex already had a win to advance to the next round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup. And the fact remains that Kenseth is a Toyota teammate, and Truex is in on all the competition meetings at Kenseth’s team, Joe Gibbs Racing, as part of his Furniture Row Racing team’s alliance.
“I felt like I probably could have pushed the issue a little bit more. I just didn’t want to risk contact, getting into him and taking him out of the race,” Truex said. “I know he’s got a lot on the line.
“We’ve got our win, so that kind of played into that decision a little bit, and … he’s a teammate, too. It would be an awkward meeting on Tuesday if I knocked him out of the way to win my second race of the first round.”
That was the issue many had when Joey Logano turned Kenseth to win at Kansas a year ago a week after Logano had won at Charlotte to open the second round.
While some applauded Logano for keeping an opponent from winning and possibly advancing, it made people wonder how someone with nothing to lose should race someone who has so much to lose.
“I was trying to race as hard as I possibly could without getting into him, and he wasn’t making that easy,” Truex said. “But that’s his job as the leader. This racetrack, it’s hard to pass at. It’s really hard to pass on when you have two cars that are very equal.
“I felt like we were a little bit better than him at that point in time, but not good enough to just drive by him. He was running the line that I needed to run. … He didn’t give me much room underneath him to get any grip, and every time we’d go off in the corner I’d get loose and have to back out from underneath him. It was tough racing, hard racing.”
Truex believes if he could have gotten by Kenseth, they could have kept Kevin Harvick from winning and potentially made Harvick fight for a Chase spot next week at Dover.
“We both burned our tires off,” Truex said after a seventh-place finish. “Man, we were going as hard as we could go every single lap, and I think Harvick was back there in clean air.
“He wasn’t as fast as we were, so he was just running smooth, consistent laps, and he ended up having better tires than us at the end.”
Xfinity Series: Sadler earns statement win
Elliott Sadler put a wrench in the theory that the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers would be the teams to beat in the Xfinity Series Chase as he won the opener at Kentucky.
JGR won 15 of the first 26 races, with Chevy teams winning 10 — JR Motorsports with four, Richard Childress Racing with three and Chip Ganassi Racing with two — and Fords with two (one by Penske, one by Biagi-DenBeste Racing).
Sadler, who led the standings for the final eight weeks until the points reset for the Chase, has won two of the last four races. JR Motorsports had won two of the first eight races and then went winless over the next 15.
“We’re just going to keep racing our behinds off week in and week [out] and keep trying to put the pressure on them,” Sadler said. “Those guys have set the bar really high and they qualify on a lot of poles, but I’ll take [my crew chief] and everybody back at the shop at JR Motorsports right now on a head-to-head battle with those guys the next six weeks.
“We’ll see what they’re made of the next six weeks.”
They will especially see what Erik Jones is made of. The rookie crashed into Ty Dillon after losing control of his car in tight quarters. JGR’s Jones is three points behind the cutoff with two races left in the round — races that he can automatically advance into the semifinal round with a win so he doesn’t have to rely on points.
“We can win anytime we come to the race track, but we beat ourselves a lot this year and we did it again tonight and that’s unfortunate,” Jones said. “It’s my fault.
“We’re back there in traffic and just got sucked around. It’s a bummer for sure. We didn’t want to end our night like that and we’ll just have to race really well at the next couple.”
Camping World Truck Series: Byron maintains focus
The win to open the Camping World Truck Series Chase at New Hampshire was not a confirmation of William Byron‘s ability. He already had five wins this season and few doubted he could win again.
But it was a confirmation that Byron can handle the distractions that have been thrown his way the last few weeks.
It was a month ago when Byron was introduced as the newest driver in the Hendrick Motorsports stable. He will drive an Xfinity Series car for JR Motorsports next year.
Then in the last couple of weeks, Byron enrolled in classes at Liberty University.
So to go out and lead 161 of 175 laps, it shows he hasn’t let either the thought of driving for Hendrick or what grade he’ll get on his next English paper impact his focus.
“There’s been a lot going on,” Byron said. “With school starting, that’s probably bigger than next year. I’ve just tried to make sure these guys know I can get to the shop anytime I need to.”
