Martin Truex Jr. was putting up a fight to try and advance in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs until he made one mistake Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Truex was called for speeding on pit road under a lap 329 caution and sent to the rear of the field. The penalty ended his race and his hopes of advancing. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who had a top-10 car before the penalty, was unable to move through the field and missed advancing by a final margin of 21 points.
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“You never know; I was just trying to do the same thing every time and I guess it was .09 miles per hour,” Truex said. “So, just really frustrated, upset. I hate it for my guys, they work so hard, and we had a shot at it tonight. It wasn’t going to be easy; there’s no guarantee. I think they said we had to run second or third to make it through, so it was going to be tough. I don’t know if we were quite good enough but it would have been nice to find out at least. I just hate that I screwed it up for everybody.”
The penalty, Truex believes, occurred when he didn’t get slowed down while coming around the corner in Turn 4 to the frontstretch pit road. He conceded he must have pushed too hard.
“It’s track position here and once you get back there in the pack, it burns your tires off really quick,” Truex said. “I just couldn’t get up there and then my tires went away really fast and the leaders in clean air caught me really quick and there’s nothing you can do. It’s the way this racing is. You have to keep track position and I lost all of ours when I sped.”
Truex qualified fourth and finished fourth in the first stage, second in the second stage, then had come off pit road in second place when the penalty occurred. He’d entered the weekend looking to erase a 14-point deficit on the playoff grid to continue competing for a second Cup Series championship.
The focus, instead, now becomes trying to win one last race before his full-time career ends.
“I’ve been getting used to swallowing disappointment lately, so I don’t know, it sucks,” Truex said. “We’ve got seven more races to try to go out on some high notes with this team and hopefully win a race. That’d be awesome. That’s going to be our focus from here on out.”