Martin Truex Jr. dominated the NASCAR regular season and has started the playoffs by winning the Tales of the Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway.

Sunday afternoon (9/17) the first race in The Chase for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Championship was pretty uneventful as far as on track accidents goes. There were only four caution periods from the start to the finish of the race.

The first two caution periods came at the end of the first two stages of the race that were won by Kyle Busch (stage 1) and Chase Elliott (stage 2). The other two cautions came following single car spins.

The mishaps that happened during the race were from drivers and teams making mistakes on pit road. There were speeding penalties and pit crew penalties that affected many drivers including a lot of the championship contending teams. Some of those drivers like Martin Truex Jr. has their mistakes happen early enough in the race to recover from. Other drivers had their mistakes happen late enough in the race to remove them from contention of winning the race like Kyle Busch.

Martin Truex Jr. came on strong in the second half of the race to come back through the field of cars after his mistake to take the lead on lap 190 of the 267 lap race. From that point forward there was only one lap he didn’t lead through the end of the race. Martin led a total of 77 of the last 78 laps of the race including the all important final lap.

Martin’s Chicagoland win marks his second consecutive win in this race having won the 2016 running of the race and it is also his fifth win of the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series season. However, it is the only race this year that he got Slimed after winning. The win also automatically advances him to the next round of The Chase.

Chase Elliott had a very strong showing in the race as he finished second with an equally impressive run by Kevin Harvick who finished in third place. Denny Hamlin had a quite day that equated to a good start to the playoffs with a fourth place finish followed by Kyle Larson grabbing fifth place in the race. There were nine Chase Grid drivers that finished in the top 10 at Chicagoland Speedway. See the complete race results for the Tales of the Turtles 400 here.

Martin Truex Jr.’s win keeps him at the top of the point standings. Kyle Larson sits in second place with Kevin Harvick in third. Bard Keselowski and Kyle Busch are fourth and fifth place in the point standings respectively. See the complete Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series point standings here.

The Chase Grid drivers will race for the automatic advance to the next round of the playoffs on “The Magic Mile” next. Of course all of the other teams will also be there to play spoiler if possible in the ISM Connect 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway Sunday, September 24th.

By: Buck Stevens

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