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MARTINSVILLE — Sure, Martin Truex Jr. has a right to be frustrated, disappointed, angry and any other number of adjectives.
Let’s stop short of outraged, though.
What, exactly, did the man expect?
Ask any driver or fan what they love about short-track racing, and they’ll describe a scene similar to the final lap that unfolded at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday. Truex made a clean pass of Joey Logano and appeared to be heading to Victory Lane, and Logano had a choice:
1. Allow Truex to win a race he deserved to win; or
2. Use his bumper to try to win the race himself.
“I knew it was coming,” said Denny Hamlin, who was right behind those two entering the final turn. “Everyone probably saw that it was coming.”
Yep, we did, but you’re never sure until it actually unfolds. Logano nudged Truex with his bumper, got the defending champion wobbling and sped to the checkered flag first, securing a spot in the championship foursome at Homestead in three weeks.
Truex, as you might imagine, was furious.
“He may have won the battle, but he ain’t win the damn war,” Truex said. “I’m just not going to let him win it. I’m going to win it.”
Truex’s crew chief, Cole Pearn, confronted his counterpart on Logano’s pit box, shouting obscenities at Todd Gordon.
“I’m happy that I don’t have a baseball bat or a jackhammer right now,” Pearn said. “I used a few choice words that I probably shouldn’t have, but it’s racing, you’re competitive and you care about it. We put our whole lives into this, and when you come that close to it, you get emotional about it, for sure.”
But drivers doing whatever it takes to win, even if it means pushing the moral boundaries a bit, is exactly what NASCAR is begging to create. Officials have gone to great lengths over the years to add value to victories, attaching significant playoff stakes to them, in the hopes of creating kind of craziness we saw on Sunday night. Speeding home second isn’t enough anymore, and thank goodness for that.
Logano knows the potential ramifications of his actions. After all, it was at this very racetrack three years ago where his dominant car got dumped by Matt Kenseth’s in retaliation for previous run-ins between the two drivers.
Truex sounds like a man who will try something similar if he gets a chance.
“I was next to him for six laps,” Truex said. “I never knocked him out of the way. We were going to race hard for it in my book. I cleared him, fair and square. We weren’t even banging doors when we passed him.
“He just drove into the back of me and knocked me out of the way. Short track racing, but what goes around comes around.”
Whether that’s true or not, the remaining three races will be hard-pressed to create the kind of drama that unfolded at Martinsville. Frenetic finishes are nothing new here, of course, but typically they’re set up by late cautions.
This one unspooled organically. The final 37 laps were run under green, and they were action-packed. Brad Keselowski took the lead from Logano, then conceded the advantage to Truex, who fought door-to-door with Logano over the final laps.
The crowd was on its feet, anticipating exactly the kind of finish they got. Logano got his win; the fans received their show.
And Truex? Once he’s cooled down, he should get what happened here, too. It’s called a heck of a race.
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