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On NASCAR's Throwback Weekend, Martin Truex Jr. threw back to the days of a single car and driver having the field completely covered, with as firm a dominating performance as Darlington Raceway has ever seen.
Martin Truex Jr. paced the field for 248 of 292 laps and held off a late-race challenge from Kyle Larson to win the Goodyear 400 at Darlington, earning his third win of the 2021 season and the 30th of his career. Larson finished second, followed by Kyle Busch, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Chris Buescher, and Ryan Newman. Buescher was the last car to finish the race on the lead lap.
Truex ran a throwback to the matte black cars he raced at Furniture Row Racing from 2014 to 2018, and his car performed much like his old Furniture Row cars did during his championship-winning season of 2017.
"We've won a bunch of stages here in the past couple of years, and always Lady Luck got us - Track position, it'd be one thing or the other," Truex told Fox Sports after the race. "... Really cool throwback to Furniture Row. Hopefully [Furniture Row car owner] Barney Visser's out there watching ... This one's for Furniture Row."
Truex first took the lead early in the race and held it for much of the day, winning stage two by more than 14 seconds. But he had to work for it at the end, as Kyle Larson cut the margin down to under half a second as Truex began to lap cars up into the top 10. Truex was eventually able to clear lapped traffic, and drove away after Larson's car faded.
"I actually had an opportunity to get by him in the middle of [turns] one and two, but I thought I'd stay patient and maybe get him to use his stuff up. But he was just a little bit better than I was on the long runs," Larson told Fox Sports. "Just wish maybe I could have taken advantage of that opportunity, but [I] thought it was gonna play out a little differently."
The return of a low downforce, high horsepower aerodynamic package to Darlington left drivers simultaneously raving about and struggling with the handling of their cars, and the early stages of the race featured drivers on the edge of control. The first half of the race saw several incidents occur, including three separate ones that eliminated Aric Almirola, Cole Custer, and Kurt Busch.
After taking the lead from Kyle Busch early on, Truex spent much of the day unchallenged at the front of the field. No other driver besides Truex led more than 10 laps, with Kevin Harvick and Ross Chastain - who ran an alternate tire strategy at the end of stage one - leading 10 apiece.
With 12 races now in the books, Martin Truex Jr. is the only driver in the Cup Series this season to have won more than one race. Truex had previously won at Phoenix and Martinsville, both races which ran a low downforce/high horsepower package.
After their first of two trips to Darlington this weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series moves on to another tough track next week when they visit The Monster Mile of Dover International Speedway.
