Martin Truex Jr. is ready to get through Sunday at the Charlotte Roval and move on.
“I’m very happy I’m never racing here again,” Truex said.
The former Cup Series champion is retiring at season’s end and makes his final start on the course this weekend. Truex has an average finish of 15.7 on the road course with two top-10 finishes in six starts.
“It has not been good to me at all, I don’t like it, and I’ve not been good here,” Truex said. “Aside from almost winning that first year, it’s been a struggle. For whatever reason, I haven’t been able to get my arms around this place.”
Truex was leading coming to the finish in the inaugural event. However, he was taken out from behind when Jimmie Johnson wheel-hopped through the frontstretch chicane, spun, and collided with Truex. The incident handed the win to Ryan Blaney.
Charlotte marks five races left in the season. It is the final road course race of the season, and the series will finish out the year with two intermediate racetracks (Las Vegas and Homestead-Miami) and two short tracks (Martinsville and Phoenix). All four tracks, which will provide a sense of normalcy to end the year, have been places where Truex has seen previous success.
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Not only has Truex won on all four racetracks, he has a combined seven wins between them, and if he were able to get another one, it would break his winless drought (which dates back to July 2023) but could be the final one he celebrates in the series.
“I’m definitely excited about Homestead, Vegas, Phoenix,” Truex said. “They’re all great tracks. Martinsville, even. Yeah, four really good places. Hopefully we just get through here (Charlotte) with something to show for it. Honestly, we were not bad in practice and I just totally screwed up my first run in qualifying and then the second time out the tires felt terrible like I was in race trim, so I hate it for my guys that I screwed that up.
“I thought we could have been somewhere maybe fifth, sixth, seventh or somewhere in there. It’s going to be a battle tomorrow, but hopefully we can get some track position. We don’t need stage points and a lot of guys will be going for that, so that should get us some track position and then, yeah, I’d like to get out of here with a good day and decent points and then go race hard the next four and hope for a win.”
Truex qualified 30th.
As the end nears, he did acknowledge he is starting to get a different type of engagement from those he comes across. There have been more “congratulations” and “enjoy retirement” sentiments. Others have said, “thanks for the memories.” The competitor in Truex, however, is not yet letting him fully process it all.
“It’s been cool but I’m just trying to focus on what I’m doing and doing a good job, and today I just totally screwed that up,” Truex said. “We worked hard this week and I’m just disappointed right now. Hopefully tomorrow goes better.”