“For our [elite] level of ­NASCAR, short-track racing is our connection to the grass-roots level,” said Truex, who raced go-karts as a child before progressing to Modifieds at Wall. “It’s the connection to the kid that got hooked on racing at the local, short-track level. It’s where ­NASCAR started. Short tracks are what got us all here. That’s why fans love them. Drivers love them. Everybody loves short tracks.”

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Truex, 38, was speaking over lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street, where, after meeting owner Virginia Ali and signing a T-shirt for a staff member, he did as advised: ordered a half-smoke with chili sauce and onions and gamely proceeded, between bites, to talk racing.

The occasion was the run-up to Saturday’s race at Richmond Raceway, the three-quarter-mile, D-shaped oval that for decades has produced some of the most dramatic, close-quarters action on NASCAR’s circuit.

It’s a track Truex loves because of the demands it places on drivers.

“It’s a finesse track,” he explained. “It’s not the guy who can necessarily go fastest for one lap [who wins]; it’s the guy who can go fastest for 40 laps. You’ve just got to be smooth and gentle, and you’ve got to go fast doing it. That’s the hard part.”

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But it’s unclear, on the eve of the Toyota Owners 400, how the competition will be affected by NASCAR’s new aerodynamic rules designed to make the racing more exciting by adding downforce. Based on early returns, the rules are working as intended on the 1.5-mile speedways, but the added downforce appears to be hurting the competitiveness on short tracks — those less than one mile, such as Martinsville Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway.

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“I’m worried about that,” Truex said. “I feel like the [short tracks] are taking a hit, in that we have so much downforce now. The cars are just bad in traffic. You get up close to another car, and it’s like there’s a wall between you. You can’t get any closer.”

Last month’s race at Martinsville had just three lead changes, the fewest since 1967. Winner Brad Keselowski led 446 of 500 laps, dominance only a mother could cheer.

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No one knows what to expect at Richmond, given the qualities that set it apart. It’s NASCAR’s only three-quarter-mile track. Its asphalt surface hasn’t been paved since 2004, which chews up tires. And it’s a night race — the first of the season — which forces crew chiefs and drivers to adapt as heat and humidity shift from late-afternoon sun to dusk to night.

“All these elements lead up to some really interesting unknowns,” Richmond Raceway President Dennis Bickmeier conceded. “When you think about the rules changes, we may end up with the best of both worlds. I always go back to [three-time Cup Series champion] Tony Stewart’s quote about Richmond: ‘It’s a short track that races like a superspeedway.’ ”

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Truex, who’s in his 14th season in the Cup Series, would love to get his first victory at Richmond in his debut year with Joe Gibbs Racing.

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As job changes go, this one has been seamless. He drove Toyotas largely built by Joe Gibbs Racing while driving for Furniture Row Racing, which had a technological partnership with the Gibbs shop. That meant he was familiar with JGR equipment and JGR knew what he could do with it: the 2017 championship and 16 victories in the past three seasons.

“Usually you go to a new team, and you have so many questions. There are so many things you don’t know, and that brings a lot of anxiety,” Truex said. “But I already had a lot of those questions answered [about Joe Gibbs Racing], so it was the perfect place for me to go.”

Richmond has been good to Joe Gibbs Racing, which has 14 Cup Series victories there, including the past two.

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Eight races into the 2019 season, Gibbs drivers are first (Kyle Busch), second (Denny Hamlin), seventh (Truex) and 17th (Erik Jones) in the standings, with five victories among them.

The season opened just five weeks after the death of J.D. Gibbs, the team’s longtime president and the son of the Hall of Fame NFL coach, following a years-long battle with a degenerative brain disease.

J.D. Gibbs was at his father’s side when he started the NASCAR operation and it hit the track in 1992. Those were lean times, with one driver (Dale Jarrett), roughly a dozen employees and rented engines from Hendrick Motorsports.

J.D. was instrumental in growing the company, cultivating corporate sponsors and building morale on the shop floor. He was also the driving force behind hiring Hamlin, convincing his father to give the scrappy Virginian short-track racer a chance when the young driver was on the brink of giving up the racing dream that his parents had financed via a second mortgage.

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Gibbs’s pride in J.D.’s vision was evident as he recounted that story over the phone. He went on to explain the significance of the number 11: Hamlin drives the No. 11 Toyota; J.D. was No. 11 as a high school quarterback. And when NASCAR asked how it could honor J.D., who died Jan. 11, at the season-opening Daytona 500, Gibbs suggested that lap 11 be dedicated to him. The crowd and TV broadcast fell silent for that lap.

On Feb. 17, Gibbs cars finished 1-2-3 in the Daytona 500 — with Hamlin winning in the No. 11 Toyota and Busch and Jones close behind.