Martin Truex Jr. has had enough.
The 2017 Cup champion was seemingly poised to make the most of a chaotic playoff race at Watkins Glen International. He’d won Stage 1, avoided the many accidents that befell his playoff rivals and was in the running for a top-15 finish in the final laps of Sunday’s race, and then everything went awry.
On a restart with three laps remaining, Todd Gilliland was forced to lift out of a potential overtake of Kyle Larson after a block entering the Esses. The field stacked up behind Gilliland and three sets of drivers crashed.
Included in the chaos was Truex, who washed up into the outside wall with Justin Haley. The damage hampered the handling of the No. 19 Toyota and relegated the New Jersey native to 20th at race’s end.
“We were in the wrong lane, on the short end of the stick as usual,” Truex said of the crash. “We were in a decent spot there. You go into the Esses and they just plow through you, put you in the marbles. This racing is just ridiculous. It’s a joke.”
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After the checkered flag flew, the retiring veteran had some frustrations to get off his chest.
“It’s just crazy that all these races always come down to this,” Truex said. “I just don’t understand how guys can call themselves the best in the world when they just drive through everyone on restarts at the end of these races.”
Amid his final full-time season in the NASCAR Cup Series, Truex has endured a difficult stretch in recent weeks. Once a contender for the regular season title, he faded to the final playoff spot on points after an awful summer and an embarrassing early crash at Darlington Raceway.
He hoped to turn things around in the postseason, but left Atlanta Motor Speedway below the Round of 12 cutline after getting caught up in a Stage 2 crash. Having races at Watkins Glen and Bristol Motor Speedway, both tracks where Truex has run well in the past, opened the door for the veteran to make up ground.
The odds aren’t looking good after his Watkins Glen setback. He finds himself 15th in the standings heading to Bristol, 14 points below the cutline. It’s going to take another run like his runner-up result in Bristol to turn things around now.
It’s all because he fell victim to the aggression of another late-race restart — something Truex won’t miss when he’s out of the cockpit.
“It’s very frustrating, but it is what it is these days,” Truex said. “I’m outta here.”