Truex Jr. wins the Coca-Cola 600! Win #3 on the year! (5-26-19)

By: Becca Cottingham

Headline Photo Credit: Matthew T. Thacker / NKP / LAT Images

The Coca-Cola 600 is a great six hundred mile race that honors are fallen men and women. William Byron was able to navigate the green flag start to lead the opening laps of this race. He is driving with confidence of a driver with a possible car to win this race. Kyle Larson is a car that eyes will be on after hitting the wall. Erik Jones had a right front tire go down and he shot up into the wall. He is saying he had no real warning about the tire going down. Then Matt DiBenedetto then hit the wall due to a tire failure. This caused another round of caution pit stops. With those we had two sets of penalties due to mistakes on pit road. Then the race leader at the time Martin Truex Jr, had a right front just go without warning as well. Stage one ended with another caution caused by Stenhouse Jr going around off of Kyle Busch’s nose. It seems like roughly every twenty laps we are getting a caution due to tires. Brad Keselowski was able to gain stage points with bring his car to the front.

After stage one ended with the most cautions we have seen during the first part of the issue of cautions have continued to be a factor. Right front tires or getting next to another driver have caused multiple scrapes of the Charlotte Motor Speedway wall. With those pit stops we have seen multiple penalties on multiple drivers. It seems though as the sun goes down the fewer issues we are having with cars having tires go down. But it does appear all of Joe Gibbs Racing have something going on with the right front on that teams cars. At this point the only driver from that team that has not hit the wall is Kyle Busch. We got to see some three and four wide racing as well in stage two. Brad Keselowski was able to make the moves to grab another stage win.

We seen fewer issues going into stage three of this four staged event. But we also got to see speeds start to drop off some as the track transitioned from extremely hot to just hot. This was the biggest change for drivers during stage three as the sun had fully set and the track was steadily cooling down without the suns rays beating down. This also allows the inside of car to start to cool down as well. Drivers really also start to show the true exhaustion of this race during stage three. The biggest crash we saw was a small team that came down on Martin Truex Jr and got loose. That sent the driver into the wall for a hard crash. At one point Bubba Wallace’s temperature gauge inside his car by his seat showed 118°. Even with the amazing technology that has come about that is a lot for a human body to deal with for four hundred laps. Martin Truex Jr after his run in with the wall bounced back well to secure the third stage win at the Coca-Cola 600.

Kurt Busch brought out the first caution in stage four after getting loose. Multiple drivers including Kurt’s younger brother and Kevin Harvick. The restart had Kyle Larson getting a huge run and then he had to start fading backward after getting into Martin Truex Jr. This eventually triggered a huge seven car wreck on the track. Something happened to Kyle Larson car that went wrong, it is difficult to tell exactly what happened to his car. But that is another hard hit for Larson. It was a night for cautions at Charlotte. Everyone was racing extremely hard. Martin Truex Jr and Chase Elliott got into it making a pass. The battles continued through the end of the race with Martin Truex Jr. grabbing the win!

Next Race:

Sunday, June 2 at Pocono Raceway for the Pocono 400 @ 2pm