Phoenix Raceway is hosting two NASCAR race weekends this season. One just happens to include the championship event.
The same was the case last year, but the 18 years before that were a different story. Homestead-Miami Speedway used to host the championship and only the championship. There were no regular-season trials.
Phoenix‘s first race is already over. Martin Truex Jr. won Sunday‘s Instacart 500. He’s already locked into the 2021 NASCAR Playoffs after having not qualified for the Championship 4 field in 2020.
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“I just don’t think people understand how hard it is with no practice, to try to be perfect every week,” said Truex‘s crew chief, James Small. “It takes a lot of effort, a lot of refinement, everything we can do just to be good off the truck. … We got back from Phoenix last year, we sucked, we finished 10th. We were unhappy with how we ran.”
So the No. 19 team got to work. Immediately.
Five races into the 2021 slate, that work has already paid off. Truex scored his first career win at Phoenix in 31 starts. More importantly, he gained much-needed confidence for the Nov. 7 finale in Arizona over his competition.
Joey Logano finished second after leading a race-high 143 of the 312 laps. Denny Hamlin was then third, followed by pole-sitter Brad Keselowski and reigning champ Chase Elliott in fourth and fifth, respectively.
“We haven‘t had that dominant car like we‘ve had during some races last year yet, other than Daytona,” Hamlin said. “I thought our car was very, very good. We‘ve just been hanging around that second, third, fourth all year. It‘s a good start because we got something to build on here.”
Second, third or fourth may not be enough to win the title. It very well could be, depending how the final results play out. But ever since the elimination Championship 4 format was installed in 2014, the champion doubled as the race winner.
That includes last season when Elliott scored his first Bill France Cup in Phoenix‘s first year hosting the championship.
“I think the fastest car is able to win the race,” Logano said. “I think that‘s happened probably the last three or four times here, the fastest car has won. I think that‘s fair. That‘s what we all want. But it‘s the opportunity to make something happen if you‘re in the hunt towards the end.”
Which is exactly what Truex did. His Toyota wasn‘t the fastest. He had the fourth-best car when it came to green-flag speed. Hamlin actually had the best mark, followed by Logano and Keselowski.
Still, Truex was able to navigate his way toward the front of the pack and when a late-race restart came about with 25 laps to go, he capitalized on his front-row opportunity, taking the lead from Logano and holding onto it until the checkered flag.
“As James said, we sucked last year,” Truex said. “Confidence is a big deal. But usually you‘re confident because you‘ve had past success, you can build on those things, you understand the race track, you understand how to make the car do certain things. I think from that standpoint, this is a big boost for us to knock this one out today, and now know if we can get here in the final four, we know what it takes and we have what it takes to get the job done here.”