Martin Truex Jr. won the postponed Crayon 301 in Loudon, New Hampshire, on Monday for his first victory at the flat oval, capping up a NASCAR Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Truex, who started outside of polesitter Christopher Bell, set his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at the point and led the race around the 1.058-mile track.
However, after the eighth caution period of the race, which was brought on by Bell’s accident, Truex, 43, had to prevail over Joey Logano and Kyle Larson in a nine-lap shootout. Logano lost against Truex by 0.394 seconds.
The Mayetta, New Jersey, native led 254 laps for his third victory of the year and 34th overall.
For the second time in three Monday makeup races, the 2017 champion triumphed. On May 1, he won at the Dover Motor Speedway.
Due to rain, Sunday morning’s 300-lapper at the Magic Mile was postponed. That left Bell and Truex as the front-runners for the noon Monday start.
Truex had led 916 laps at Loudon prior to the race, the most of any driver without a victory at NHMS, yet he still raced beautifully despite losing a little bit of control in the closing stages.
Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick came in second and third, respectively.
Chase Elliott, the 2020 champion, took a knock in the rankings by finishing 12th without a win and 26th in points.
Kyle Busch started the race third in the points standings but crashed out on lap 70, resulting in his fourth DNF, and finished last in the 36-car field.
Busch limped to the finish line with major right-side damage after striking the Turn 4 wall, while Truex easily won Stage 1 by two seconds after passing William Byron.
Aric Almirola, Larson, Logano, and Harvick all restarted in the first two rows after the third yellow since they only changed two tyres as opposed to four, while Truex was in sixth.
However, after a serious restart incident involving Almirola, Truex eventually raced to another stage victory by outdistancing Larson by almost a second on Lap 185.
