By Jared Turner

Martin Truex Jr. had a comfortable lead and was cruising to victory at Richmond when Derrike Cope’s car scraped the wall and brought out a caution with less than five laps remaining. After all the leaders hit pit road, Truex exited the pits behind Kyle Larson and lined up second for the restart with two laps to go. But instead winning the race that he’d dominated, Truex was unable to run down Larson and ended up slamming the wall after bouncing off Denny Hamlin as the two Toyota drivers battled for second. While Truex didn’t seem to harbor any ill will toward Hamlin, he was more than irked at NASCAR for throwing the questionable late caution for Cope, who was running more than 10 laps down. “A caution for a guy who really shouldn’t even be out there is kind of ridiculous,” Truex said. “It’s tough to lose them like that.”