{"id":22822,"date":"2018-11-04T19:24:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T01:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=22822"},"modified":"2018-11-04T21:37:28","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T03:37:28","slug":"nascar-sunday-texas-notebook-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/04\/nascar-sunday-texas-notebook-2\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Sunday Texas Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Truex undergoes trial by fire but doesn\u2019t get badly burned<\/b><\/p>\n

FORT WORTH, Tex. \u2013 After Sunday\u2019s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, Martin Truex Jr. felt as though he had just been through a trial by fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m telling you, God is testing us,\u201d said Truex, who had to start from the rear of the field after an engine change in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota and later suffered both a loose wheel and a pit road penalty for driving through too many boxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad to start at the back, got to the front, hung around there for a while and then had a loose wheel there again,\u201d Truex said. \u201cJust a tough day. Overall, a good day. Luckily, we were able to get up front and get some stage points in the first two stages and then we had trouble, but we had it at least in time to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two laps down at one point, Truex recovered to finish ninth and takes a 25-point edge over fifth place Kurt Busch into next Sunday\u2019s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Round of 8 elimination race at Phoenix, where the field will be cut to four.<\/p>\n

Another saving grace for Truex was that Kevin Harvick won at Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cHarvick or Kyle (Busch) winning is a perfect scenario\u2014the guys that are ahead of you in points,\u201d Truex said. \u201cThat was good. I feel OK about where we are. I think we need a little more speed to run with the Fords \u2013 they\u2019re clearly really, really fast right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this was last year, they would all be complaining that we\u2019re too fast, so I don\u2019t know if I should do a (Brad) Keselowski and start whining about it or not. They\u2019re really fast, and if we\u2019re off just a little bit we can\u2019t run with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were off a little bit today. On the short run, they were really fast, but on the long run I thought we were as good as anybody, but just never got to show it. Track position was so, so hard to get.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n

KYLE BUSCH SURVIVES DIFFICULT TEXAS RACE WITH GOOD POINTS CUSHION<\/b><\/p>\n

Almost from the outset of Sunday\u2019s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch\u2019s race started to go south.<\/p>\n

During a pit stop on Lap 32 under a competition caution, he entered the first sector of pit road too fast and was flagged for a penalty. Restarting from the rear of the field, Busch worked his way up to seventh by the end of Stage 1, but the second 85-lap segment brought more problems.<\/p>\n

Ten laps after pitting on Lap 131, Busch brought his No. 18 Toyota to pit road again, thanks to a loose wheel. He fell two laps down and didn\u2019t regain the lead lap until the race reached overtime. By then it was too late to climb higher than 17th<\/sup> at the finish.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Busch goes to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Round of 8 elimination race with a 28-point lead over his brother, Kurt Busch, who stands fifth \u2014 the first driver below the current cut line.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a fast car,\u201d said Adam Stevens, Busch\u2019s crew chief. \u201cYou speed on pit road, you go to the back and you have a loose wheel under green then lose a couple laps and we just couldn\u2019t get back on the lead lap.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, at the very end we did, but it didn\u2019t matter at that point with only a green-white-checkered to finish. Felt like we had something we could have raced for. We didn\u2019t make many adjustments, but nothing to show for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

IT\u2019S ALL OR NOTHING FOR CHASE ELLIOTT AT PHOENIX<\/b><\/p>\n

Chase Elliott is a realist. He knows that, without a victory next Sunday at Phoenix, he almost surely won\u2019t be eligible for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series title in the Nov. 18 Championship 4 race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.<\/p>\n

Not that Elliott didn\u2019t have a solid performance in Sunday\u2019s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Under conditions that made passing difficult, he worked his way up from the 16th<\/sup> starting position, ran in the top 10 for most of the afternoon and finished sixth at the 1.5-mile track.<\/p>\n

But on Sunday, solid wasn\u2019t good enough. Elliott leaves Texas 39 points behind Martin Truex Jr., who currently holds the fourth spot in the Playoff standings. At Phoenix, the field will be cut from eight drivers to the four who will battle for the championship.<\/p>\n

Elliott has never won at the one-mile track in the Sonoran Desert, but he does have a second and a third in his last two starts there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, yeah, I feel better about Phoenix than I did about today, for sure,\u201d Elliott said. \u201cYeah, we’ll see. I mean, I don’t know till we get there. Yeah, tough spot to be in. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut, ultimately, you\u2019ve got to be in a must\u2011win situation at Homestead if you ever make it down there, so you might as well get used to it and like it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Truex undergoes trial by fire but doesn\u2019t get badly burned FORT WORTH, Tex. \u2013 After Sunday\u2019s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, Martin Truex Jr. felt as though he had just been through a trial by fire. \u201cI\u2019m telling you, God is testing us,\u201d said Truex, who had to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":22824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[366,16,21],"class_list":["post-22822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-aaa-texas-500","tag-nascar","tag-texas-motor-speedway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/358454.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-5W6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22823,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22822\/revisions\/22823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}