By AMANDA VINCENT
Martin Truex Jr. claimed his first win of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season but the second for Joe Gibbs Racing in the first five races Sunday at Phoenix Raceway in the Instacart 500. The win also was Truex’s first-career win at the track. To claim his latest win, Truex had to overcome early-race contact with the wall and a lengthy pit stop for repairs.
“About lap 67, I hit the fence off of turn two,” Truex said. “Our car was super tight to start off the race. It wasn’t any good at all. I can’t believe I’m standing here right now. What an effort by my guys on the team. It’s just unreal. To hit the fence, to go to the back, to fix it, to make some huge adjustments and for us to be able to run as good as we did at the end there, I’m speechless. This has been a tough track for us. We struggled here in the fall. We came here with a whole new mindset, a whole new focus on trying to figure this place out, and I’ll be dammed if we didn’t do it. Hopefully, we can keep tuning on this thing and come back for the Final Four in November.”
Joe Gibbs Racing notched two top-three finishes, with Truex’s teammate Denny Hamlin in third.
“I think we are happy with that,” Truex said. “Obviously, we want to win with our Offerpad Toyota, but certainly, the short tracks is something we want to put a lot of emphasis on this year. We just didn’t have the results on the short tracks that we wanted last year, but getting the first short track win here for JGR, one, three is a good sign that we worked on the right things, and we are headed in the right direction.”
Joey Logano finished second after leading a race-high 143 laps of the 312-lap race. Logano led Team Penske to two top-five finishes and a three-car top-10 effort with teammates Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney finishing fourth and 10th, respectively.
Chase Elliott rounded out the top-five, despite starting in the back because of an unapproved change and a pit-road speeding penalty. Three Hendrick Motorsports drivers started the race in the back but still managed top-10 finishes. Elliott’s teammates Kyle Larson and William Byron also dropped to the back for the start of the race because their cars failed pre-race inspection twice. Larson finished seventh after also sustaining two pit-road speeding penalties, one of them during a cycle of green-flag pit stops just past lap 140. Byron finished eighth.
Other top-10 finishers included Kevin Harvick in sixth and Christopher Bell in ninth.
The Penske duo of Ryan Blaney and Logano were stage winners. Keselowski, Hamlin and Blaney combined to lead the 75 laps that made up the first stage, with Blaney taking the stage win after taking the race lead on lap 44.
Logano led most of the 115-lap second stage that ended on lap 190. He took his first lead by getting off pit road first during the caution after the first stage.
Truex took his first lead by getting out in front of Logano on a restart with 89 laps to go. Logano retook the lead lead by getting out of the pits first during a caution with 50 laps to go. He and Keselowski led laps before Truex took his race-winning lead on the final restart with 25 laps to go.
“Once they got 19 car (Truex) tuned in, he was the fastest car on the race track,” Logano said. ”We did a good job maximizing our day with our Shell/Pennzoil Mustang. We were a second-place car and finished second, won a stage and second in the other stage, so a lot of points. I hate finishing second, though. It really stinks, but, overall, this has been a good race track for us. The last few times we’ve been here is first, third and second, so we’re all over it; just needed that last run not to have a caution. I think we were in a pretty good spot to maybe run that thing out, but, overall, that was where we had it.”
Below, is the complete finishing order of the Instacart 500 at Phoenix Raceway:
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