Benefield: Truex crew chief keeps his head in the game with winning ploy

SONOMA - The move was the talk of the race. Did Martin Truex Jr. and his crew chief Cole Pearn use a secret code to bluff the rest of the field at the Toyota/Save Mart 350 into thinking they would make a second pit stop in the third and decisive stage Sunday? Did “pit” really mean “don't pit”? Did “don't pit” mean something entirely different?

Truex, who was initially called over race radio into to pit row by Pearn, instead kept driving and rode the move to his second victory at Sonoma Raceway in a win that was as much guts and strategy as it was driving. And it was a move that inspired all kinds of chatter about gamesmanship and radio ploys.

But turns out there was no secret code, no attempt to throw other teams off their track. They simply decided - on the fly - to keep driving.

“I called him off at the last minute,” Pearn said. “I'd like to say we are smart enough to use codes but we're not.”

And with that, Truex, the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champ, drove away with the win at the Toyota/Save Mart 350 Sunday. And with the decision not to make that key second stop, he made it look easy.

“No codes,” he said. “It's a recipe for disaster because we've all seen it before, guys have codes and then they call it out and the guy is like, ‘What the hell? I thought it was the other way' and they screw up.”

So secret code or no, it was a move that baffled and snookered just about every other team on the track. And the brains behind the call? He is the guy who got brained by a 4x4 on Thursday building a kids' tree house at his home in Denver.

The man behind what might from this moment on be called “The Call” celebrated on victory row sporting a massive gash on his forehead courtesy of an accident the required multiple stitches and “KO'd” him.

“He wouldn't have made that call if he wouldn't have been hit in the head,” Joe Garone, team president of Furniture Row Racing quipped.

The remark got hearty laughs but there was some truth there. The call to keep his driver out looked like a stroke of genius when the team was bathing in beer after the race, but had a caution flag flown and the leaders leveled up, Pearn would have been kicking himself.

And he knows it.

“A caution could have came out and we would have been snookered the other way,” Pearn said.

Still, it was a great call by Pearn, Garone said.

“It was a flying by the seat of your pants kind of call,” he said.

Truex just chuckled at the idea that the team had some sophisticated form of communication to throw other teams off their scent.

“Cole and I have a great relationship. I never question him when he's calling races,” Truex said. “When he said ‘Pit,' then ‘Stay out' I wasn't sure what was going on to be honest. I just did what he said.”

It was a move that was picked apart high and low because it could have gone so wrong.

Every other team in the hunt stopped twice in stage three. Sonoma Raceway is notorious for what it can to do to tires so pit management is a crucial part of race strategy. So when Truex gambled and drove on, people went bonkers.

“Apparently it was a bigger deal because everybody keeps asking me about it,” Truex said. “I'll have to watch the broadcast and look at Twitter.”

Kevin Harvick of Mobile 1 Ford, who led for 35 laps Sunday, said the move didn't change what he was trying to do – win.

“It didn't affect our day at all,” he said.

Third place finisher Clint Bowyer of One Cure Ford felt differently. He said he heard the pit, no pit unfold in bits as he raced.

“You pick up little bits and pieces of what the crew chief and spotters are telling you,” he said. “But I saw him stay out when we pitted, and I was like, ‘What's that mean? Where are we going to come out?'”

Third place, it seems.

“In all, there was three cars that were (the) class of the field, and proud that we were one of them but kind of frustrated that we weren't over there in Victory Lane,” he said.

It was payback of sorts for Truex. He led here for 25 laps last year before he suffered engine trouble and took himself out of the race after 80 laps.

This year, with far fewer wins under his belt coming into Sonoma, Truex looked like the driver to beat from the opening lap. He pulled ahead of pole position winner Kyle Larson and led for 20 laps before starting his give and take with Harvick for the lead.

“Just racing with him is fun,” Truex said of Harvick's team. “Today we played a little cat and mouse early in the race and went back and forth.”

And clearly the cat and mousing went deep into the 110-lap race.

Truex conceded that Harvick's car was the stronger of the two through much of the race, but that his confidence in his race grew as the race went on. And then came “The Call.”

“Without the strategy, it was going to be a hell of a battle,” Truex said.

But the call, and the guy with the gnarly gash on his noggin who made it, may have taken the bang out of the final circuits, but it certainly added an element of intrigue and electricity.

And with it he delivered his driver the win.