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Truex, Busch look like unstoppable Toyota tandem

[September 19, 2017] By Jonathan Ingram, The Sports Xchange

Although he's letting his driving do the talking, Martin Truex Jr. has declared this year's NASCAR championship is his to win. Kyle Busch confirmed it may be his title to lose.

The rest in the field of 16 appeared to be also-rans in the opening round of the playoffs at the Chicagoland Speedway.

Truex Jr. led 77 laps after bouncing back from a speeding penalty and a bad pit stop. Busch, who dominated in qualifying and in the first stage, led 85 laps but failed to bounce back from a bad pit stop and a penalty on his pit crew.

Each driver's day had a unique tweak beyond the fact their respective Furniture Row Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas were able to smoke the field on speed.

For the first time in three weeks, Truex Jr. finally closed out a race that he dominated in the later stages without the interruption of misfortune or a caution.

Busch had the combined misfortune of successive pit problems -- neither of his own making -- that left him two laps down. He only got one back. His unusual tweak was taking it in stride, despite the fact his Gibbs team had decided to switch pit crews for the playoffs by replacing his regular guys with the crew from the entry of Daniel Suarez.

Busch has been known to avoid the media or express his disdain after such failure, but this time stood his ground and answered the inevitable questions. He gives every impression of being focused on the long run to the final race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway that will determine the champion. After the smoke cleared, due to his 30 playoff bonus points Busch remains fourth in the standings, 35 points ahead of the cutoff line for the first round.

"It's just disappointing that we had trouble on pit road like that," Busch said after complimenting the speed of his Camry. "We just never had the opportunity with how the cautions fell to get back on the lead lap. We'll get back to the shop and talk about it, and really all we can do is move on and put it behind us."

There have been complaints from Ford driver Brad Keselowski on Twitter that Toyota's new Camry has an advantage. It's an open question whether that advantage comes from the rulebook or the work of the teams of Furniture Row and Gibbs. But NASCAR is not likely to change its rules during the playoffs. On the other hand, Truex Jr.'s car needed four passes through inspection on race day; the tires from both his car and the Toyota of Busch were subjected to mid-race checks for unapproved air pressure bleeding as well.

Competing teams will have to come up with more speed to beat Truex Jr. and Busch or bank on the forlorn hope that both will make enough mistakes to lose the advantage of their bonus points -- which isn't likely. As bad as Busch's day was, he fought back from disaster to a decent result.

Can anybody catch the two front-running Toyotas? Runner-up Chase Elliott sounded a cautious note about the performance of his Hendrick Motorsports Chevy after leading 42 laps.

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"Just a much-improved day from where we've been, which is nice," said Elliott, who couldn't come close to catching a fleeing Truex Jr. at the finish. "Obviously would have been great to battle with Martin a little bit more. We didn't have anything for him. From where we've been to where we ran today was a major, major step in the right direction, frankly where we need to be, where we deserve to be, to the potential we can run."

Truex Jr. remains the favorite on both performance and sentiment. His longtime girlfriend Sherry Pollex joined him in Victory Lane, where she talked about her ongoing battle with ovarian cancer and efforts to raise money to fight cancer. For his part, Truex Jr. generally remains heroic about his quest, despite some chippy comments in Richmond about the late caution call by NASCAR and about former Daytona 500 winner Derrike Cope, who brought it out.

Twice, with both electronic and the print media, Truex Jr. declined to say his comeback on Sunday was a statement about the previous two weeks or his title chances.

"I don't think we really came here to do that," he said. "I think we just came here to race, try to race to the best of our abilities, and at the end of the day accomplish what we feel like we're capable of. That's what we did."

The unstated fact is that Truex Jr. is on a mission to prove himself in his 12th full season. This follows unfulfilling stints at Dale Earnhardt, Inc., Michael Waltrip Racing and last year's scuttled campaign, when a blown engine at Talladega knocked him out. Then there's the motivation of Pollex's battle with cancer. They want to enjoy a championship together.

Ford's leading man, Harvick, led 49 laps and out-dragged Busch on the restart for Stage 2 to get the lead. But like Elliott, his laps led had more to do with the absence of the front-running Toyotas.

"Our focus was to make sure that we didn't make any mistakes today," he said. "And everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing worked hard to work on that gap between those cars. But we've known about that gap (to the Toyotas) and feel like we've closed that up and we knew that not making mistakes was gonna go a long way."

Where was four-time winner Kyle Larson? He has yet to win this year on a 1.5-mile track and Sunday's performance may foreshadow problems since there are four of those remaining on the schedule.

"I know (Truex) was really good and he was able to cruise to the front no problem," said the Chip Ganassi Racing Chevy driver. "But we seemed to, and it looked like everybody really struggled in traffic except for a couple of guys. But, a solid day, got stage points and then a top five finish."

It's always an iffy proposition when the best way to advance is by not making mistakes. That may get a team to the final round in Homestead. But from the perspective of the 1.5-mile Chicago track, the last race on the 1.5-mile Homestead-Miami track looks like a showdown between Truex Jr. and Busch.

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