Martin Truex Jr.’s hopes of winning an outright championship ended with a fitting whimper Saturday night in Bristol.
Truex finished one lap down in 24th after a pit lane speeding penalty and was eliminated from the playoffs in the first round along with Brad Keselowski, Ty Gibbs and Harrison Burton. Truex was in the top five and had a great chance to sneak into the second lap before his speeding penalty under a caution by Corey LaJoie on Lap 330.
The penalty dropped Truex from the top five at the end of the lead lap and he simply couldn’t move forward. Truex was quickly passed by race winner Kyle Larson and had no chance to do anything on a restart as the final 163 laps of the 500-lap race were allowed.
“It’s really tough when you’re going .9 miles an hour, which ruins your chances of having a good season,” Truex said after the race. “I don’t know how it happened. I don’t even know how I got that close, honestly. I felt like I did the same thing every time I stopped. But sometimes you’re… maybe I was just a foot to the left… It’s my fault, it’s my mistake.”
Truex, 44, announced in the middle of the season that the 2024 season would be his last full-time season at NASCAR’s top level. He entered the season with hopes of a title and it was a miserable campaign instead.
Saturday night’s race was Truex’s eighth straight finish of 20th or worse. He hasn’t finished in the top 10 since his eighth-place finish at Pocono in July and hasn’t finished in the top five since his fourth-place finish at Kansas in May. Given the nature of Saturday night’s race, Truex could have easily finished in the top five had he not accelerated in pit lane.
“You never like to let anybody down, no matter what the situation is,” Truex said. “So I hate that I did that tonight.”
Truex and his Joe Gibbs Racing team have been fast. He has qualified in the top five in three of his last four races. Mistakes and bad luck have simply plagued the team. Truex was involved in crashes at Atlanta and Watkins Glen to open the playoffs and was eliminated in the regular-season finale in the second round when he lost control of his car under Ryan Blaney and slammed into Blaney and the wall.
The 2017 Cup Series champion was one of two winless drivers to qualify for the 2024 playoffs and is seeking his first victory since New Hampshire a season ago. After winning three times in the regular season in 2023, Truex was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs due to a third-lap crash in the second playoff race and an 18th-place finish in the other two first-round races.
He now finds himself in the same situation as last year, with no other goal than to win the final seven races of the season. Truex has failed to do so in 2023. Can he break that terrible trend and grab one more win before retiring?
