Martin Truex Jr. is proving NASCAR’s case as to why its regular season matters.
The numbers don’t lie: Truex has finished no better than 17th through six Cup Series postseason races — the three-race first round of Darlington, Kansas, Bristol and the three-race second round, which wrapped up Sunday, of Texas, Talladega and the Charlotte Roval.
Truex’s average finish between those two rounds? 21.3.
The number of points Truex earned in those six races combined? 106.
Even with that, he’s still headed to the Round of 8.
“Stage points and bonus points,” Truex said Sunday afternoon after finishing 20th. “I didn’t create the system. We used it to our advantage. That won’t get us through the next one. The next one, you’ve got to be running up front. Two winners of the next three races are probably going to be playoff guys that are still going. Need to turn it up, and we need to figure it out quickly.”
Truex resets for the semifinal round as the second seed with 4,036 points. Those playoff points were earned by winning the regular-season championship, which is what he’s been falling back on as his Joe Gibbs Racing team has had a rough go of things in the postseason.
“That’s the beauty, and that’s the thing that sucks about this deal, you know what I mean?” he said. “I’m sure there’s guys that are upset. They outran us enough to get in, but they didn’t have the bonus points. It is what it is.
“I hate that we didn’t run better today or finish better at least. I thought the first two stages, maybe our car was pretty decent, but, man, I don’t know what happened. Need to go back and look at that. It wasn’t much fun, but we made it, so here we go. We’ll try three more.”
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The No. 19 finished 18th at Darlington Raceway in the postseason opener with ill-handling — an issue that carried over from practice when Truex hit the wall.
The second race, Kansas, was going as well as it could so early in the day. But on lap 4, Truex blew a tire and crashed. He finished 36th. Bristol, however, was another “fight” of a night with his Toyota Camry and he finished an unimpressive 19th.
To start the second round, he finished 17th in Texas. He spun during the race and again struggled to get the car driving as he needed. Talladega was an 18th place, and one that Truex said was just a matter of being clogged in the draft.
The champ has not led a single lap in the postseason. His last top-10 finish was at Watkins Glen in late August.
Sunday was Truex’s third consecutive finish outside the top 15 on the Roval.
“I’m definitely excited we’re not coming back here again,” he said. “This track has just been a thorn in our side. Feel good about moving on and feel good about what we can do in the next three races. Some good tracks for us and hopefully we can get something going. It’s been a pretty tough playoffs so far.”
The good part about looking ahead — Truex has victories at all three racetracks in the next round: Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami and Martinsville Speedway.