The engine gremlins haunting Toyota’s Joe Gibbs Racing returned with a vengeance at Richmond, like a bad sequel you didn’t ask for. Despite four engine failures before the Olympic break, Toyota’s officials, with a bravado that in hindsight bordered on comedic, assured us on Saturday that the issues were sorted.
Well, guess what? That might have been a touch optimistic.
Saturday TRD General Manager Tyler Gibbs, while bidding adieu to David Wilson at his retirement presser, claimed they had diagnosed the problem, insisting that although the issues seemed alike, they were due to different gremlins in the machinery. Sunday, Martin Truex Jr., much to his dismay, discovered these gremlins hadn’t packed up and left.
Truex started strong in second, finishing Stage 1 in third. But as fate would have it, a sluggish pit stop in Stage 2 dropped him outside the top 10, finishing the Stage in 11th. Shortly after the restart, the nightmare began. Smoke poured from the tailpipes, and before long, Truex was parked, becoming the first car out.
“It started missing all of a sudden and losing power,” Truex lamented. “So I came down pit road to check it out, and it was on fire.”
He elaborated, “It hiccupped once on the backstretch, then it started missing. It’s like it broke a valve spring or something, and then it kind of self-disintegrated, self-destructed really quickly. I don’t know. One of those them days.”
As for the differing tire compounds? Truex waved that off like a mild inconvenience. “It really wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “James (Small, crew chief) had the right strategy with the tires. We just had a pit road hiccup with the left rear coming off. We went from being one of the fastest cars on the track to, well, not so much. We missed an adjustment on the track, but we were still in with a shot.”
A three-time Richmond winner, Truex was scored last in what’s likely his final Richmond appearance as he rides off into the retirement sunset. “It’s a shame,” he admitted. “Last race here full-time, and it would have been nice to get another win.”
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.