Martin Truex Jr put in a flawless performance at Sonoma
It took 33 laps for Truex to get into the lead in Sunday’s race but once he did, he didn’t deviate far from it with a fast #19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
A late-race caution, triggered by Hamlin’s crash into the wall, sent most of the lead-lap cars – including Truex – into the pits for new tyres but Chase Elliott, and two other runners lower down the order, stayed out on the restart with 15 of 110 laps remaining.
It took Truex less than two laps to power around Elliott to reclaim the lead and he easily held off Kyle Busch by 2.979 seconds to earn his second win of the 2023 season.
The victory is the 33rd of Truex’s career and his fourth at the 1.99-mile road course, the most recent coming in 2019.
Martin Truex Jr put in a flawless performance at Sonoma
The win on a road course was a dramatic turnaround for Truex and his Joe Gibs squad, which struggled terribly on this type of track last season. Last season, the highest finishing Toyota driver at Sonoma was 18th.
“It took a lot of hard work by everybody at Toyota and TRD and everybody at JGR,” Truex said. “We had to do some work with NASCAR and redesign some stuff – everybody did – and they did a good job there.
“Just hats off to my team. To be so bad here last year and come back and do that with the same car basically, it’s really unbelievable.”
With Kyle Busch second, he kept clear of Joey Logano at the finish, while Chris Buescher also got by Elliott late on to take fourth.
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Elliott clung on to fifth on his older tyres to beat A.J. Allmendinger and Michael McDowell, as Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell and Ross Chastain completed the top 10 finishers.
Hamlin failed to finish due to significant damage to his #11 Toyota in his crash that caused the late-race caution.
