{"id":8462,"date":"2020-09-07T09:49:44","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T13:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=8462"},"modified":"2022-07-22T12:10:30","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T16:10:30","slug":"elliott-and-truex-collide-in-closing-laps-at-darlington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/09\/07\/elliott-and-truex-collide-in-closing-laps-at-darlington\/","title":{"rendered":"Elliott and Truex collide in closing laps at Darlington"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a classic case of two drivers fighting for the same real estate.<\/p>\n<p>In the waning laps of Sunday&#8217;s Cook Out Southern 500,\u00a0<strong>Martin Truex Jr.<\/strong> was pursuing\u00a0<strong>Chase Elliott<\/strong> for the race lead. While Truex had the faster car, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/09\/07\/effect-of-high-downforce-at-darlington\/\" target=\"_self\">he struggled to overtake Elliott<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Rounding Turns 3 and 4, however, he took the high line and got a run on Elliott. He pulled to the inside and went for the overtake in Turn 1.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe had a run on me there, off of (Turn) 4 and he just kind of cleared himself into 1,&#8221; Elliott said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s Darlington, and typically, you don\u2019t want to go in side-by-side,&#8221; Truex said. &#8220;I felt like I had enough of a run and enough space there that the last foot or so, (Elliott) was going to understand that if I was committed, we both weren\u2019t going to make it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And make it, they didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Truex drifted up into Elliott&#8217;s path and sent both of them into the wall. Both radio&#8217;d in that they thought they had a tire going down. Truex surrendered the lead with 13 laps to go and ducked onto pit road.<\/p>\n<p>As Truex noted, that&#8217;s &#8220;kind of how you race&#8221; at Darlington Raceway.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If a guy gets a run on you and he\u2019s just about got you cleared, you have to give that last little bit,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Now obviously, the end of the race, probably the pass for the win, (Elliott) wanted to drive it on in there and I was committed to being clear and there was no way we were both going to make the corners. Basically, when I made up my mind and I was driving it in there and then he drove in on my right-rear quarter, there was no possible way that we both weren\u2019t crashing. That\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Elliott and Truex finished 20th and 22nd, respectively. Both leave Darlington sixth (Truex) and seventh (Elliott) in points, with a 16 and 12-point cushion over\u00a0<strong>Clint Bowyer<\/strong> in the Round of 16 cutoff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kevin Harvick<\/strong> was the beneficiary of this incident, as he overtook Truex and <a href=\"https:\/\/racing.ap.org\/article\/harvick-takes-southern-500-after-leaders-elliott-truex-bump\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">drove onto his 57th career NASCAR Cup Series victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a classic case of two drivers fighting for the same real estate. In the waning laps of Sunday&#8217;s Cook Out Southern 500,\u00a0Martin Truex Jr. was pursuing\u00a0Chase Elliott for the race lead. While Truex had the faster car, he struggled to overtake Elliott. Rounding Turns 3 and 4, however, he took the high line [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":8463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,1664],"tags":[61,1430,1222,159,14,1269,371,270,1223],"class_list":["post-8462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","tag-chase-elliott","tag-cook-out-southern-500","tag-darlington-raceway","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2020","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-nascar-playoffs","tag-southern-500"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}