Leading a race-high 228 laps, Truex appeared on his way to his first win of the 2024 season in March when a late caution sent the race into overtime and the field down pit road for new tires.
Denny Hamlin beat Truex off pit road for the lead and then quickly got around Truex on the restart and held off Joey Logano for the victory. Truex questioned whether Hamlin jumped the start, but NASCAR ruled it good.
Truex, in his final full-time NASCAR season, remains without a win this year but still well positioned to make the playoffs on points with four races remaining in the regular season.
“It’s been a great track and it’s a ton of fun,” Truex said of Richmond. “We had a great run going there in the spring and thought we had a shot at winning, then we were down a set of tires, and the cautions didn’t go our way.
“I think we’ve improved our program a ton and have been putting on a show at some of the short tracks and places like Richmond. I hope for myself and my team we can get back in Victory Lane there like we’ve done before.
“We had such a dominant run there in the spring and the caution came out and our race went haywire from there. Would like to get back out front and stay there on Sunday.”
Martin Truex Jr, Joe Gibbs Racing, Auto-Owners Insurance Toyota Camry
Photo by: David Rosenblum / NKP / Motorsport Images
Truex has three career wins, 10 top-five and 18 top-10 finishes at the Virginia short track. His 1,587 laps led at Richmond is the most he’s led at any active track on the Cup schedule.
All three of his wins have come in his last 11 races, while competing in Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 19 Toyota.
“From the first time I raced there in 2003, I’ve always enjoyed the track,” he said. “There was a long period where I didn’t have great numbers there, but I felt like I loved the track and always ran well there and had a lot of crazy things happen there throughout my career.
“Once I got to Furniture Row (Racing), we started leading a ton of laps there. We also had a couple of heartbreaking finishes where we should have won the race but didn’t, and I wondered if it was ever going to happen.”
There will be a new change that Truex and all Cup teams will have to deal with in Sunday night’s race.
To help improve the quality of racing, NASCAR is allowing Goodyear to provide teams use of a softer, “option” tire in the 400-lap race.
Like they were able to do in this year’s NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway, teams will have three sets of the “option” tire at their disposal, with one set for practice and two for the race.
Managing tire wear has been a key ingredient to success at Richmond of late and use of the option tire – or wet weather tires if conditions warrant – could vastly alter strategies.
Managing the tire wear … and tire options
“Richmond is a very unique track, very old school track,” Truex said. “Tire wear, you have to manage your stuff and that really plays into my strengths.
“It’s going to be different this time around with the tire combination from what we had in the spring. Going to have to figure out how to recapture it and hopefully come up with something that worked like it has in the past.”
“You are going to have to see a very specific set of circumstances to decide to put the soft tire on. There’s still the potential that it could make some interesting things happen, it just depends on how the race plays out.”
