Martin Truex Jr’s Martinsville race Sunday was a microcosm of his entire NASCAR Playoff run. Entering as the regular season champion with 3 wins, Truex had troubles both in the pits and on the track in each race in the Playoffs it seemed that left him with finishes that saw him fighting to advance each round.
His best finish came in Las Vegas, a ninth, but beyond that he finished outside the top 10. This despite two poles in the final two races.
Sunday Truex started from the pole and led 83 laps finishing third in Stage 1. But a speeding penalty later sent him deep in the field.
According to Truex, that speeding penalty flipped the switch on his entire race.
“It’s completely different.,” he said. “If we couldn’t find a way to flip track position pit stop-wise, we were never going to get there. Our car was good. The field is so tight, so close. Your car drives so much worse in traffic. I felt like we did really good to get back to where we did. You just burn the tires off so much worse back there in the hot, dirty track, dirty air. You’re in more rubber. It’s just a dogfight. I don’t know.“
Then during a pit stop his jackman, a replacement for this race, dropped the car off the jack losing Truex several spots on pit road.
In the end Truex finished 12th and outside the cutoff to make the Championship 4.
“We gave it a hell of an effort,” Truex said. “I felt like we had a really strong car. I don’t think we could have beat the 12 (Ryan Blaney). He was really, really strong. We were definitely close. Something to work on for next time. Really disappointed. I mean, I thought I was well under speed leaving that box. Clearly we were speeding, so we have something to look at there. It’s devastating. That’s racing.”
Truex said he was starting to process what happened during his Playoff run.
“Man, I think it just shows how tough this sport is,” he said. “Anybody that races here and guys that have raced here that do the broadcasts, they’ll tell you. It’s this close, man. You find this little bit, and suddenly you look like a hero. Some other guys find some stuff, suddenly you’re not. We’ve been fast at times, but execution hasn’t been solid, hasn’t been consistent.
“We’ve had some bad luck. We’ve had a little bit of everything. Like I said, some years it feels like it’s your year, some years it feels like it’s not. I just feel we couldn’t do anything right. If it was ever a 50/50 call, it always went against us. A blown engine, a flat tire, you name it. Problem after problem. Just kept setting us back, and we couldn’t get no momentum. I think we did a great job today. It was a tiny little error, .2 miles an hour can ruin your whole year unfortunately.”
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.