NASCAR Power Rankings: Martin Truex Jr. moves on up
The longest race of the season is now in the rear-view mirror.
1. Kyle Busch
Busch retains the No. 1 spot after a third-place finish in Saturday night’s race. Busch had a car that led 79 laps and was capable of keeping right behind his teammate and race winner Martin Truex Jr.
“Loose in the daylight and then still loose in the darkness, and finally we got it tightened up there, and for some reason with this package for me, it's like, it's either way too loose or it's too tight,” Busch said of the 2019 rules. I can't find a happy medium where I need to be and I can't make up time when I'm either too loose or too tight.”
The finish bumps Busch’s average finish up to 6.8 this season. That’s 1.5 spots better than his average finish in 2018 and — on the longshot that it holds — would be the best average finish for any Cup Series driver since Dale Jarrett won the 1999 Cup Series title with an average finish of 6.8.
2. Martin Truex Jr.
Welcome to a tie atop the win standings, Martin. The driver of the No. 19 car is now tied with Busch and Brad Keselowski with three wins in 2019. Yes, three drivers have won a combined nine of the 13 points races this season.
Truex said he was “amazed” that his damaged car had so much speed at the end of the race. Truex caused the third caution of the day when he hit the wall exiting turn 4 and kept going. NASCAR helped bailed him out with a quick-trigger caution, but his team did a heck of a job to get a car with a smashed right side back fast enough to lead a race-high 116 laps.
“I didn't know how bad it was,” Truex said of the damage after hitting the wall. “All I knew is how hard I fit the fence. I was like, normally you hit it like that, it's going to be a long day, know what I'm saying?”
“I didn't know, I just kept telling [crew chief Cole Pearn] what I needed, what the car was doing, and he just kept swinging at it. You know, the first couple stops after the damage, we were pretty bad. We stayed out at one point to try to get a little track position back, and we were just plowing tight, and we fell back, I think, to 16th or 17th or something on that one run where we stayed out on older tires and guys had tires, and it was like, you've got to take a bigger swing at it.”
3. Joey Logano
Logano helped push Truex to the lead with less than five laps to go but couldn’t get close enough to challenge for the lead after that.
Logano finished seventh, ninth and eighth in the first three stages of the race, so moving up to second over the final 100 laps is a nice improvement.
“Dangit, we had the run there on that last restart, and if he didn't clear right in front of me ‑‑ I needed to get to his outside,” Logano said. “If he was ever, if I got to the bottom of him, I was never going to clear him. He was just going to stay on my door, on my quarter[panel], and I wasn't going to be able to get the job done. I needed to try to get to his outside there the last couple laps, and he knew the same thing, and he just washed up the racetrack.
“He did a good job defending the position, and I wish I could play it over one more time maybe, but overall if you told me we were going to finish second the first two stages, I would have taken it.”
4. Chase Elliott
Elliott sure looked like he had control of the race after taking the lead on lap 303. But Truex ran him down 40 laps later and passed him for the lead on lap 344. Elliott ended up finishing fourth after finishes of fourth, fourth and third in the first three stages. That’s consistency right there.
“We had a really solid car,” Elliott said. “It was a solid race all around. We just needed a little bit more there at the end and needed to not give up control to get to Martin (Truex Jr.) in those last 40 to 50 laps. We just needed to finish a little stronger. I think I have some work to do on my end to make sure I’m keeping up with the track, giving the right information and not getting behind.”
5. Brad Keselowski
Keselowski is the best driver in the Cup Series when it comes to recovering from pit road spins. After executing a perfect spin into his pit stall at Talladega, Keselowski spun off the track late in Sunday’s race and got the car straightened out nicely on pit road without hitting anything.
That spin set up the race’s final restart and it’s worth wondering if a caution was really even necessary for that in the first place. As Keselowski was slowly sliding down on the apron away from the racing line NASCAR threw a caution before waiting to see if he hit the wall or not as evidenced by the flashing lights in the GIF above.
Anyway, Keselowski finished 19th.
6. Kevin Harvick
Harvick finished 10th and has finished in the top 10 in nine of the first 13 races of the season. But after qualifying fifth Harvick’s car got worse as the race went on.
“For us, we lost the handle on the car,” Harvick said. “We had some different shift codes in the tires that we had to run because that’s what we had. As soon as we put all those shift codes on, the car just went to absolute junk.”
7. Alex Bowman
Bowman has three top-five finishes and four top-10 finishes in 2019. They’ve all come in the last four races. After three straight seconds, Bowman finished seventh on Sunday night. He’s moved from 21st to 10th in the points standings in that time.
The seventh also came after Bowman had to pit after hitting the wall.
“It was my fault that I drove it into the fence, so that makes me frustrated with myself,” Bowman said. “People make mistakes and that was just one that I made. I’ll just learn from it and move on. Stuff happens.”
8. Kurt Busch
Busch’s chances ended with a crash on lap 310 when he went spinning through the infield.
Busch ended up finishing 27th.
9. Denny Hamlin
Hamlin had two flat tires and crashed into the inside wall on the final lap. It was an eventful day.
His car was fast when it wasn’t having issues either. Hamlin led 21 laps and had gotten back inside the top 10 after the first flat tire. The second came late in the third stage and is listed by NASCAR on the race report as a “spin.”
This is not a spin.
If you’ve made it this far in the post, you’ll notice this is the third mentioned example of NASCAR being extremely quick with caution flags on Sunday night in a race that showcased close racing in the immediate laps after restarts because of the series’ redesigned 2019 rules.
10. Clint Bowyer
Bowyer was involved in that caution that took out Kurt Busch and was also part of the caution that took out Daniel Hemric. That means Bowyer was involved in more multi-car accidents on Sunday night than had happened at all intermediate tracks combined in the first 12 races of the season. Kinda crazy.
Bowyer finished 24th.
11. Ryan Blaney
Blaney finished 13th after finishing in the top 10 in each of the first three stages.
12. Aric Almirola
Almirola was 11th and could have been better if his car performed better on restarts.
“It was a struggle most of the night,” Almirola said. “I don’t know. We can’t make it handle the way we need it to. It won’t go on restarts. I don’t know. We have to just keep working and get better.”
Lucky Dog: After an early spin Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished fifth.
The DNF: Erik Jones made it 22 laps before his car had a flat tire and smashed into the wall.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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