Tire strategy calls don't work out for Martin Truex Jr.
HOMESTEAD, Florida – Martin Truex Jr. and his team weren't going to win the 2015 Sprint Cup Series title racing Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick heads up. So the team tried some late-race strategy.
It didn't pay off, as Truex ended up 12th in the Ford 400 and fourth out of the four drivers chasing the Sprint Cup Series trophy. Busch won the race and the title, beating Kevin Harvick to the line by 1.5 seconds.
Crew chief Cole Pearn elected to take two tires on the race's next-to-last caution flag on lap 168. The decision put Truex into the lead. But it came at a cost. Homestead-Miami Speedway chews up tires. With the rest of the field having four fresh tires beind him, Truex was going to be at a grip disadvantage over the course of a long green flag run.
The green flag run happened. The next caution didn't come until there were 10 laps to go in the 267-lap race. By the time the yellow flag came,
"We had to try something," Truex said. "We weren't getting anywhere. We made just about every adjustment we could possibly make on our race car and never really seemed like we could find that speed, so we were just taking some gambles. We did two early and it worked out for us pretty well. We did two later on and the race went green longer than we had hoped and we probably lost two spots because of it."
"But I think all in all at the end of the day, net‑net, we kind of ended up where we should have. We just didn't have the speed, so we were trying to gamble on some things and trying to get some track position any way we could, just couldn't hang onto it."
The changes Truex's team made to the car didn't begin during the race. They started the night before. He knew the team wasn't going to be competitive during practice on Saturday.
"Without – we really felt like without trying something quite different, we weren't going to get there because we had tried so many different things throughout practice, different packages, to try to get the feel or get some – really get some grip in the car. It just was never there for us. So we figured we had to take a big swing at it, and honestly I don't think it really was any worse than it was in practice."
The fourth-place finish in the points standings is Truex's highest points finish and the first time he's finished inside the top 10. Can he top it next year? There's reason for optimism. Truex's team is starting a technical alliance in 2016 with Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch's team.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
