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Martin Truex Jr. objectively had the car to beat on Monday in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway but ultimately was defeated by misfortune, the timing of his final pit stop and the aerodynamic nuances of the current generation car.
Truex led six times for 47 laps, including a clean sweep of both stages across the rain-split race on Sunday and Monday, but found himself on the offensive in the closing stages of the Firekeepers Casino 400.
Truex pitted at the end of the second stage while Buescher stayed out. That meant Buescher had enough fuel to reach around 40 laps to go. Crew chief and strategist Scott Graves called Buescher to pit road with 43 laps left. Truex could have gone much further but James Small called Truex in just three laps later.
Given how minimal tyre wear had been all weekend, that surprised Graves.
“We pit based on basically where we had to because we had run it as far as we could,” Graves said.
“We maybe had another couple laps in it. I don’t think you ran all the way to the end of the fuel, but we basically ran to the point where we were in the window where we could make it to the end.
“This kind of race with minimal lap time falloff, that was the play we had. I was kind of surprised that everyone responded as quickly as they did. I thought some guys would stay out and keep running just based on the way it’s played out in the past.
“I think when we pit and we actually cycled out in front of them, and with faster lap times for a few laps there, they realize they had to do something to counter that.”
So, they did, with Small calling Truex down pit road with 40 laps to go, cycling back out behind Buescher. It meant Truex was going to have to pass Buescher in traffic before everyone else pitted, which didn’t happen, or once Buescher cycled to the lead and with clean air.
Truex made several runs at Buescher over the final 20 laps but kept washing up the track in the wake generated by the leading car. Buescher ran a lower line on corner entry, which allowed Truex to find some clean up further up the track, but not enough drive off to complete the pass in the next corner.
His best chance came with 12 laps to go when Truex drew even with Buescher but washed up the track. Truex made another run to Buescher but could only close to the rear bumper and the margin of victory was 0.152s.
“It was clean air,” Truex said. “Passing the leader is next to impossible on equal tyres. I needed him to slip. He slipped once and I got under him and I couldn’t complete it. It’s the nature of this track and this package. The leader has a huge advantage.
“The car was really good, and we could have won if we had a better cycle but weren’t close enough to take advantage.”
Truex said he did everything he could short of crashing Buescher, which he wasn’t going to do.
“I don’t know what I could have done,” Truex said. “I feel like I did everything I could. To get beside him was basically impossible and then it’s impossible to complete that pass. I don’t know what else I could have done besides running into him but I wasn’t going to do it that way.”
That respect was recognized and appreciated by Buescher.
“Truex is a very clean racer,” Buescher said. “I try to live by that same mindset ourselves so that we can get into those situations and have that level of respect where we’re going to be able to race hard and race clean and get a win out of it. But we definitely worked for it.”
But ultimately, the race was won and lost based on how much time Buescher gained by when he had to pit, passing Truex on pit cycles instead of on the track.
“It just worked out really well for us,” Graves said.
“I mean, the main thing was just track position. Obviously for us, it was more based on our fuel window, what we had to do. Responding the way they did, it was a little bit of a surprise that as many people did that. It all worked out.”
The NASCAR Cup Series next competes in the Verizon 200 At The Brickyard with race start at 14:30 Sunday August 13 local time/04:30 Monday August 14 AEST.
