FONTANA >> Per tradition, Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Auto Club Speedway covered 200 laps. Martin Truex Jr. won the fifth race of the season in his Furniture Row Ford by 11.685 seconds over Kyle Larson, sweeping both internal stages and qualifying on top.
But for many of the 60,000 on hand, the race was essentially over all before the first stage was complete. Kevin Harvick, who carried a three-race win streak to Fontana, and Larson tangled in the entrance to the backstretch on lap 39. Harvick’s Ford suffered damage that required several laps to repair.
Harvick did return to finish 35th among the 37 racers. In the process, the Bakersfield driver dropped out of the Cup points lead, falling to eighth place, 46 behind Truex.
“It was my fault back there,” said Harvick of the incident that triggered the first of five yellow flags. “(I) was trying to side draft and then as we touch, it just came back up the race track. I was just trying to get a little too much. I knew the stage was coming in.
“That was just a dumb mistake on my part. … The race car was there, it was just a mistake.”
Larson’s crew was able to recover from the incident, although it took the defending race winner’s crew a while to repair the damage.
“We were just racing hard, side drafting each other for a few laps,” said Larson. “I think he came down down to maybe side draft down me, got into my right rear, it spun him pretty quick.
“From then on, we had to repair a little damage, but we were able to finish sixth in the first stage in a short amount of time, which was good. It was good to get all the way to second. Would have liked to be one spot better, but we couldn’t see Martin.”
From that point of the race that lasted 2 hours, 42 minutes and 41 seconds, it was Truex. He led 125 total laps, including the final 32, to post an average speed of 147.526 mph.
Larson recovered to finish second with Kyle Busch third, followed by Brad Keselowski fourth and Joey Logano fifth. Denny Hamlin, Erik Jones, Ryan Blaney, Jimmie Johnson and Austin Dillon comprised the rest of the top 10. There were 36 cars running at the end.
It was Truex’s first victory in Fontana, and the 16th in his NASCAR career.
“It feels great, it’s good to be here. I am really proud of my team and everybody here,” Truex said at his post-race news conference. “We’ve started the season off strong. Everyone kept asking when we were going to win and we hadn’t won any stages yet. And I said, ‘Don’t worry, we are close. We just need to figure it out a little bit.’
“And today, what a hot rod. This thing was unbelievable. I knew we were close (Saturday) in practice but we needed to get better to win. Cole (Pearn, crew chief), Jazzy (Jeff Curtis, lead engineer) and Pete (Rondeau, director of competition) and those guys really came up with a game plan last night. We changed a few things and they had to hook both corners together. We were really loose off Turn 4 yesterday and really tight off Turn 2. We just got better off 4 and 2, and when you do something big like that, it makes a huge difference. This thing was flawless.”
What made the win even sweeter was the proximity to the TRD (Toyota Racing Development).
“It’s a dream come true and this team is unbelievable,” said Truex. “We were just fighting hard and never gave up on it. I knew we really had a good race car after the first adjustment of the race. The thing just came alive.
“From there it was just about managing my tires and being smart. We had a little trouble getting beat out of the pits and that was tough. At one run we fell back to fifth and then we needed to work our way back up. I really just needed to take care of my front tires and once we got some clean air, this thing was unbelievable.”
Crew chief Pearn had a feeling about the race.
“This was the first week where coming to the track I felt like everything was making a little more sense,” he said. “We had a better plan going into the day. We had a quiet confidence that if everything lined up, we were definitely going to have a good run at them.”
It was the best showing of the young season for Jimmie Johnson, the all-time leading race winner at Fontana.
“Each week we have been getting a little bit better. We are definitely not happy with where we are right now but we are seeing the improvements, we have been seeing it internally,” said the seven-time Cup champion. “We are making the cars drive better and better and we are getting more competitive. So, a strong day for the Lowe’s Chevrolet but we are not where we want to be but we are getting closer every week.
“It just seemed like we had more durability with that left-side tire on lower tire pressures. I don’t believe we had any issues relative to that and that is something we are always scared of here, especially on green-flag stops when those tire pressures are low. We didn’t have that today, but we had some great pit stops, Chad (Knaus) called a great race, and we had a good solid day, so we will take it.”
While he battled early with Truex and led 62 laps, Kyle Busch was not a factor in the end.
“Just thought we were closer, but obviously not,” said the three-time race winner. “We were right on top of the 78 (Truex) yesterday. The first run I thought we were really good and showed some strength, but from there on out showed no strength.”
Louis Brewster can be reached at brewsterl1949@gmail.com
