Truex Wins at Martinsville

April 11, 2021

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Martin Truex Jr. won the Blue Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500 from Martinsville Speedway on Sunday to pick up his second win of the season.

Truex ran towards the front for most of the day, but his car began to come alive when the sun set. Truex got around Denny Hamlin late in the race and was able to pull away to pick up the win.

Truex said the teammates had diverging setups at the end of the race.

“I was loose coming off the corners and his car got tight,” Truex said. “We kind of had opposite things going on and it made it difficult to pass.”

Truex said he struggled with his handling until the lights came on towards the end of the race.

“[Crew chief] James Small and the guys really hung with me all day,” Truex said. “We never could quite get it the way we wanted. It started getting dark and it came to life.”

Hamlin was dominant throughout the race, and led a race-high 276 laps before settling for a third-place finish.

After a rash of cautions throughout the third stage, Hamlin said his car didn’t have the speed over the final green flag run.

“We had a good short-run car, just did not have a good long-run car,” Hamlin said. “We had a really fast car for 20 laps or so, and then it would just kind of go away.”

“We had a great day and stayed up front all day. Gave ourselves a shot at it, just wasn’t quite good enough.”

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