The Truex Brothers Sweep Dover: NASCAR Dover Recap

Martin Truex Jr and his younger brother, Ryan Truex, both come from Mayetta, New Jersey and always treated Dover Motor Speedway as their home track. This past weekend became a dream come true for both brothers, as they both took home the win in their perspective races.

Ryan Truex has waited for this moment for many years as he finally scored his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series victory driving the No. 19 for Joe Gibbs Racing, part of a partial schedule he has with the team. Truex led for 124 of the 200 laps and swept both stages to a dominating and well-deserved victory.

“I’m just so thankful, all these fans, my team, they really stuck behind me,” said happy and emotional Ryan Truex. “Most people didn’t believe in me, and I still did – my girlfriend, my family, my parents, my brother did. I’m just so thankful to be here. I felt like with 20 to go, I was just waiting for something to happen, just praying, please God keep everything straight, and let’s get to the end of this. What a car, what an amazing Toyota Supra. I’m speechless. I thought I’d be more emotional right now, but when I crossed the flag, I couldn’t even talk on the radio and I’m not an emotional guy. This is for everyone that doubted me.”

Josh Berry went on to finish second in the race, who was also scheduled to run the Cup race substituting for Alex Bowman who is out for an injury.

“We made some good adjustments in the second half of the race, the pit crew executed well the last couple stops and had a good green-flag cycle and got up to second, but the 19 was just too far out and it seemed like he was the best car all day,” Berry said, “It’s a fun day. I love this race track. Hate we didn’t get the win, but it was a great rebound and great day for us.”

Justin Allgaier, Austin Hill, and John Hunter Nemechek rounded out the top five, with his teammate Sammy Smith in sixth. Meanwhile, Cole Custer finished seventh and earned $100,000 from the Dash 4 Cash, after claiming it the week before at Talladega. This was the final installment of the Dash 4 Cash for the 2023 Season.

Brandon Jones, Sam Mayer, and Daniel Hemric rounded out the top ten.

It had been 54 races since Martin Truex Jr. last saw victory lane in a point-paying NASCAR Cup Race, but at his home track, the track that had his first career win back in 2007. However, on a race that was delayed to Monday due to weather, Martin Truex Jr was able to join his younger brother on the weekend to get into victory lane and finally earn another win. Truex led for 68 of the final 69 laps of the race, as he won the race via pit strategy, as well as pit execution.

“It feels incredible,” Truex said. “I feel like we’ve been close a bunch of times, that’s for sure. Felt today, with that caution, what’s going to happen here and then a good call by James (crew chief James Small) to take two (tires), and then I was able to get a pretty good restart.

“Just thanks to everybody that stuck with me. We knew we could do this. We’ve shown we can lead laps and have dominated races and it just never all came together. I’ve said we just had to keep doing what we were doing and not overthink it.”

Truex won the Busch Light Clash at the LA Coliseum to start the season but his last win before this weekend was traced back to the fall Richmond race in 2021.

Ross Chastain, who won stage two, came up short and finished second but did take over the regular season points lead. Ryan Blaney, who now has a 57-race winless streak finished third with his sixth top 10 of the season and second top three in the last two races. William Byron and Denny Hamlin finished fourth and fifth. Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher, and Josh Berry (subbing in for Alex Bowman) rounded out the top ten.