While most of the post-race chatter on Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway centered around the historic nature of the race, there was the matter of how exactly Denny Hamlin held off Martin Truex Jr.
Racing through heavy lapped traffic, and also being passed by lappers on fresher tires, the two Joe Gibbs Racing teammates effectively raced nose-to-tail over the final 20 laps — the culmination of a nearly 50 lap run under the most severe degradation scenario in 15 years.
Truex got to him with 17 laps left, and once again with 10 laps left, but could never complete the pass and ultimately finished a second behind Hamlin.
“You know, we just came out too far behind him (Denny Hamlin) there on the (final) green flag stop,” Truex said. “I was right on his bumper when he pitted and when I came out, he was a straightaway ahead of us and just used my stuff up too much to try to get there.
“The last five laps, my right rear was corded. It was close. A great run for our Auto-Owners Camry. Great job by everybody on our team all weekend to put us in this position. I was an interesting race, that’s for sure. Just came up a little bit short there.”
Truex has not always had fond feelings towards Bristol and is still looking for his first Cup win there. He said it took an extreme conservation race to have a shot at the win. It also helped that the Toyota teams seemed to figure out, halfway through the race, what the key was to extend the life of their tires from a set-up standpoint.
“Early in the race, went way too hard and realized your tires were gone and then, it’s like ‘Alright, we can’t run as hard as we can’ so just had to figure out how hard you could push it and what kind of lap times you could run throughout the run,” Truex said.
“Then we kind of just managed it from there. It was tricky, honestly, I barely pushed harder there on that last run for 10 laps, and you know, at the end, I was right-rear corded. There’s a fine line and fortunately for us, we had a lot of speed in our Toyotas today and we were able to save tires and stay up front. That was the key.”
Hamlin credited the information crew chief Chris Gabehard gave him in addition to his set-up decisions too.
“Certainly, he just kept making the car better, as well,” Hamlin said. “It’s not all driver. You have to have a car that is easy on the tires, as well. They just did a great job building me that today.”
He also said there was a bit of gamesmanship between himself and Truex, but it was also a game he played with Kyle Larson earlier in the race too.
“Mainly it was when I was controlling the race and leading,” Hamlin said. “I just had a certain pace. Looking at the dash, here is the lap time. (Gabehart) would keep me updated, You’re running a little quicker this time. He did a good job of kind of reeling me back in.
“It was a chess match. There was a time where me and (Larson) was up front. I was on the outside. He was leading. I could tell he was just really going slow. I told the spotter, Hey, if we want to run side by side, I’m good like that, block up both lanes, block the whole field. I didn’t realize till later the line I was running was just killing my tires.
“You learned on the fly. You just made adjustments. Each run we made, we just got a little better.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.