Martin Truex Jr. made the pass on Ryan Blaney to win Saturday nights GoBowling 400 at Kansas Speedway. Truex Jr. led a race-high 104 laps in route to his second victory this season and his first at Kansas.
“It’s always good to get a nice beer shower, 5-Hour Energy and whatever else they’re throwing on us here. Pretty awesome. Awesome day. Awesome weekend. This team rocks, man, they’re so good. We just stuck with it all night. We had an awesome race car. There’s times there we looked like we weren’t going to have a shot at it. We just kept fighting and made it happen.”
Surprising
A crash involving Joey Logano, Danica Patrick and Aric Almirola in lap 201 brought out the red flag. The crash resulted in Almirola being airlifted to the hospital.
A lot of us took a hard hit. Something broke on my car, I don’t know what it was. I noticed it as I was trying to go in. I tried to back it off but you’re going 215 (mph) and it’s hard to check up. The car just took a bit step sideways into the corner and I hooked Danica (Patrick). I haven’t seen a replay yet, I don’t know what happened. You can see the right-front popped (right there) and it popped. I just hope everyone is okay. I hope Aric is alright. That’s the last thing you want to see, a big hit like that for anyone. It’s unfortunate for everyone,” Logano said.
A Richard Petty Motorsports press release was sent out on Sunday saying, “Almirola suffered a compression fracture to his T5 Vertebra after a multi-car accident at Kansas Speedway Saturday night. Almirola is mobile and will follow-up with his doctors in Charlotte.”
Not Surprising
Blaney won his first career pole position at Kansas on Friday and won Stage 2. Blaney finished fourth and captured the team’s second top-five finish and its fifth top-10 result of the season.
“The last three races have been really, really bad, and it’s just an extra kind of slap to the face that we’ve had really fast cars in all those races we had troubles in, and we shouldn’t have finished 35th. We should have had top 10s in all of them. So it was nice to show our muscle this weekend and prove that, like I said, this is where the 21 team deserves to be, so it’s just nice to get back on track.”
Surprising
Kyle Larson finished in sixth-place finish in his No. 42 Target Chevrolet SS. But Larson continues to maintain the series point lead by 44.
“The early parts of the race I thought we were okay, not great, but I thought we were like a fourth or fifth place car and I got into the wall on one of those later restarts after that big wreck. I just got really tight and it took off and hit the wall. Then my car was pretty tight afterwards, so I’m sure some aerodynamic issues there, but still recovered for a decent finish there.”
Not Surprising
Trevor Bayne finished 10th and captured his second top-10 finish and his eighth top-15 finish of the season.
“That was a hard-fought 10th-place finish. It’s funny how expectations change. A year ago I would have been pumped for a 10th and now it is what we should be doing. We are getting better. Our potential is better. If we can finish 10th on a weekend like this, when we get the cars where we need them we can do business. I appreciate the hard work and execution by my team tonight.”
Surprising
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. went a lap down early due to a loose wheel. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. battled back and finished in 11th place.
“We had a strong GoBowling Ford all weekend which shows the gains of the Roush Fenway Racing organization. We know what we need to work on for future intermediate tracks. It’s great to be locked into the All-Star race so I’m looking forward to going after that 1 million.”
Not Surprising
Brad Keselowski and the No. 2 Elite Support Ford Fusion team fought back from two laps down to finish in second place. Keselowski now has seven top-5 and nine top-10s finishes this season.
“We had a really good Elite Support Ford Fusion all day and just never had a chance to show it. Every time we started to pass cars and cycle up to the front, we had some kind of issue, which was a real bummer to not be able to showcase the strength that we had.”
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series heads to Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday May 20 at 8 p.m. EST on FS1 for the Monster Energy Open and All Star Race.
