I hope everybody’s week got off to a good start with some Monday racing, and that you were able to watch or otherwise follow along, via television, radio, or your favorite mobile device.
If you missed it, Martin Truex Jr. picked up a Monday win at Dover for his 21st career victory, which was similar to his first career victory, which came in a Monday race at Dover in 2007.
Now, the turnaround is only five days between races before a Saturday night affair at Kansas. Even though that was a pretty cool stat, here’s some other stats that surpass it on the cool meter.
Can’t handle the Truex
Truex’s margin of victory was 9.5 seconds (9.501 if you want to get technical). That’s basically a blowout in the NASCAR world.
Since 2016, there have been three races with margins of victory of nine seconds or more, and they’ve all been won by Truex. He also did so at California and Sonoma last season.
Going back to 1993, when NASCAR instituted electronic scoring, there have been only 18 races won by 9-plus seconds (or when the winner lapped the field), and only Truex has three of those victories.
Only two other drivers even have two of those victories — Dale Jarrett and Matt Kenseth.
Twice as nice
Last week at Talladega, Alex Bowman got his first career top-two finish in his 127th career Cup Series start. This week, he doubled down on that and made it back-to-back top-two finishes.
He’s the first driver whose first career top-two finishes came in consecutive races since Kasey Kahne back in 2004. Both of Kahne’s top twos were also second-place finishes. Hopefully Bowman doesn’t have the same fate as Kahne, who had six runner-up runs before his first victory.
Bowman joins a select list of six drivers in the modern era (since 1972) to have their first two top-two finishes in consecutive races, joining Kahne, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Ken Schrader and Tim Richmond.
Kyle Busch turns it up to 11
Kyle Busch narrowly got a top-10 finish at Dover, finishing 10th for the third time this season and the second straight week. It was his 11th straight top-10 finish to start the 2019 season.
In doing so, he tied Morgan Shepherd’s record for the longest top-10 streak to start a season. Shepherd did so in 1990, with only one finish of exactly 10th in there, in the Daytona 500. However, Shepherd didn’t pick up a win in that stretch.
His streak also came to an end in the 12th race of the season with a blown engine at Sonoma. He actually had three DNF’s in the next five races and had only five more top-10 finishes in the final 18 races of the season, finishing fifth in points.
If Busch can get a top-10 at Kansas, he can turn his focus to the next streak. Dating back to last season, he has 13 straight top-10s. Nobody has had a longer streak since Dale Jarrett went 15 straight in 2000.
The record is still in the distance, Joe Weatherly (in 1962) and Herb Thomas (in 1953) both had 24 straight top-10 finishes.