Martin Truex Jr. might not be a full-time racer anymore, but Sunday’s Daytona 500 was hardly his farewell tour.
The 2017 NASCAR Cup champion and 34-time race winner waved “see ya” at the end of last season after 18 full-time years. But, as it turns out, he didn’t really mean it. He’d dropped hints about wanting another crack at the Daytona 500—a race that, rather annoyingly, he never managed to win.
And so, with a bit of help from his longtime sponsor Bass Pro Shops (read: a sizable check), he found himself in a TRICON Garage ride. The catch? No Charter, meaning no guaranteed spot in the field. But Truex did what Truex does—he put down a lap quick enough in Wednesday’s qualifying to make the show.
Come Sunday, he was holding his own, surviving the first stage without incident. But then, at the start of Stage 2, calamity. Joey Logano, who had been leading, suffered an electrical hiccup, backed things up like rush hour traffic, and triggered a chain reaction of crumpled sheet metal. Truex, caught in the mess, took enough damage to call it a day.
“It’s always disappointing when you don’t finish, no matter what situation, especially in a race like this when it’s probably our only shot this year,” he said. “…It was fun while it lasted, but unfortunately, we were just wrong place, wrong time there.”
The wreck itself? A blur.
“I’m not sure – a big stack-up – and by the time they got to me, it was really aggressive – I guess you would call it,” he said. “Just no time to react and knocked the nose off of the thing. Just unfortunate for all of our guys. We had a fun week down here, making the race… We were hoping to have a lot more fun than that. We were just biding our time, and just in a bad place on the restart there.”
The only silver lining for Truex fans? This wasn’t a one-off comeback—he’ll be back. Eventually.
“Yeah – just don’t know when or where or what,” he said. “We will see.”
So, in other words, stay tuned.
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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