For much of Sunday’s race, Truex and his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team seemed to have settled on a pit strategy that would put them in position to contend for the win.
It started in Stage 2, when Truex was the first called to pit road for new tires on a green-flag stop and his team elected to break the 160-lap stage in two, hoping the advantage of new tires late in the stage could translate into victory.
It worked, as Truex ran down Christopher Bell on older tires to take the stage victory.
With few cautions in the race, the final 170-lap stage again broke into a one or two-stop strategy test, but this time, Truex’s team opted to remain on one along with race leader William Byron, while Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and others went for two.
The two-stop strategy won out, as Hamlin ran down Byron for the lead with four laps remaining and held off Harvick for the win. Byron ended up third and Truex – who led 80 laps in the race – was relegated to fourth.
“I mean, it’s frustrating. But that’s part of it here. It’s part of the whole day,” Truex said. ‘Obviously, we did good there for awhile. James (Small, crew chief) did a great job all day with strategy, getting us up front, getting us the lead. Our Auto Owners Camry TRD was super-fast out front, super-fast in clean air.
“At the end, I think we just tried to gamble, tried to gamble on beating (Byron). He ended up trying to do our strategy, which we both screwed up.”
Late in the final stage, Truex came over his radio and said, “I feel like we’re on the opposite strategy from earlier.”
Small replied, “Yeah, we are on the opposite. ... We’ll be fine.”
After the race, Small came over Truex’s radio and took the blame for decision. “I’m sorry. We (expletive) up, OK?”
Truex, who remains third in the series standings, tried to put a positive spin on Sunday’s results.
“I think we had the best car. Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Overall, I’m really proud of our guys and really a step in the right direction from Phoenix, completely different mindset coming here, after today what we can do going forward.
I’m excited about that. Just thanks to everybody at TRD, Toyota, everybody back at JGR for working their butts off.”
