Martin Truex Jr. survives to fight another day

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 15: Martin Truex Jr., driver of the #19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota, and Denny Hamlin, driver of the #11 Mavis Tires & Brakes Toyota, lead the field during the NASCAR Cup Series South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 15, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
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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 Engle