Martin Truex Jr. is still in NASCAR’s Championship 4. Barely. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver came into the race at Las Vegas, where he has two wins, fourth in the standings and above the cutline to advance to the final 4.
He almost left Vegas outside that margin.
During the pit stops after the Stage 1 end however, crew chief James Small elected to keep him out while the rest of the leaders pitted. On the restart he did his best on old tires to keep the lead, but after 9 laps on the point was no match for those on new tires, which was the entire field, and began to fall.
By the end of Stage 2, which ended on lap 170, Truex was mired in 20th, seemingly able to go nowhere. It led to a sarcastic exchange on the team radio.
“Fucking terrible,” Truex told Smalls during the Stage caution.
“Sorry,” Small replied. “We completely fucked that up.”
“I almost didn’t listen to you,” Truex followed. “But I’m not really good at that. …”
“Yeah, you should not have listened clearly,” Small replied. “We have no idea what we’re doing.”
Somehow Truex was able to rally back and with 6 laps to go was ninth. As Kyle Larson crossed the line to win, Truex had to settle for a 9th place finish.
Truex said the key to his rally came on the restarts, there were two after the start of the final stage.
“It was just trying to figure out how to minimize the damage and hope that we could get a longer run,” Truex said. “We did at the end, which was really helpful.”
Truex had no idea why he couldn’t move forward in traffic.
“I don’t know what we had going on,” he said. “Restarting up front, we were pretty good, and then on the long runs, really good – I thought – probably a third-place car, but once we got back there – 16th, 18th whatever it was – it was just really bad on the restart. I would lose three, four, five spots every time and then once we got strung out and got going, I would pick them off and work our way forward, but then we would get another caution and I would lose a couple more.”
He leaves Vegas still fourth in the standings, but only two points about Christopher Bell who finished second Sunday.
“It was an uphill battle,” Truex said. “But luckily at the end, we were able to have a couple of better restarts and at least maintain, and then work our way forward from there. All-in-all, it was okay. The pit call obviously killed us in Stage two.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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