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Truex admits he "could have pushed the issue" with Kenseth

It looked all-too-familiar to last season – a driver already locked in the next round of the Chase attempting to get around Matt Kenseth, who was leading the race and still trying to secure his own berth.

Matt Kenseth, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, Martin Truex Jr., Furniture Row Racing Toyota

Matt Kenseth, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, Martin Truex Jr., Furniture Row Racing Toyota

Action Sports Photography

Martin Truex Jr., Furniture Row Racing Toyota
Martin Truex Jr., Furniture Row Racing Toyota
Martin Truex Jr., Furniture Row Racing Toyota
Matt Kenseth, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Matt Kenseth, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Matt Kenseth, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota spins off the nose of Joey Logano, Team Penske Ford
Matt Kenseth, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
Race winner Martin Truex Jr., Furniture Row Racing Toyota

This time, it wasn’t Joey Logano trying to get around Kenseth, it was his pseudo-Toyota teammate, Martin Truex Jr., who had just won last weekend’s Chase opener at Chicagoland.

For more than 30 laps late in Sunday’s Bad Boy Off Road 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Truex – who led the most laps in the race (141) – attempted to get around Kenseth to retake the lead, but never quite could complete the pass.

Truex tried everything he could short of knocking Kenseth out of the way. And when asked after the race if he raced Kenseth “different” because he was a teammate, he admitted he was being a little extra careful.

“I mean I was trying to race as hard as I possibly could without getting into him and he wasn’t making that easy, but that’s his job as the leader. This race track is – it’s hard to pass at,” Truex said. “It’s really hard to pass on when you have two cars that are very equal. 

“I felt like we were a little bit better than him at that point in time but not better – (not) good enough to just drive by him. He was running the line that I needed to run and I could get inside him, but he didn’t give me much room underneath him to get any grip and every time we’d go off in the corner, I’d get loose and have to back out from underneath him.”

Risk vs. reward

But was he racing as hard as he could?

“It was tough racing, hard racing. You know, I felt like I probably could have pushed the issue a little bit more. Just didn’t want to risk contact, getting into him and taking him out of the race,” Truex said. “I know he’s got a lot on the line.

“We’ve got our win, so that kind of played into that decision a little bit and like you said, he’s a teammate, too. It would be an awkward meeting on Tuesday if I knocked him out of the way to win my second race of the first round.”

Kenseth ended up finishing second to race winner Kevin Harvick, but his runner-up performance left him fourth in the series standings and all-but locked into the next round of the Chase heading into next weekend’s elimination race at Dover, Del.

Kenseth holds a 26-point cushion over 13th-place Austin Dillon. The four Chase drivers lowest in points without a win after Dover are eliminated from championship contention.

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