Martin Truex Jr.'s Costly Mistake on Pit Road Leads to Early Playoff Exit
Martin Truex Jr. will not ride off into the sunset as a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion. The 44-year-old driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE, who will retire from full-time NASCAR Cup Series competition at season's end, saw his final NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs run come to an end in Saturday's Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
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RESULTS: Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol
In what was a microcosm of Truex's, and the No. 19 team's season, they had a lot of speed in Saturday night's race evidenced by Truex being a top-10 contender for the entire opening 333 laps of the race, where he ran as high as second, but a mistake crushed any hopes of Truex advancing to the next round of the Playoffs.
On his final pit stop of the race, Truex was busted for speeding on pit road. As a result, he would drop to 26th on the Lap 336 restart, and he would never recover. Truex would end the night with a 24th-place finish, one lap off of the pace of race winner Kyle Larson.
After the race, Truex explained his pit road speeding penalty, which he believes occurred because of the line he took down Bristol Motor Speedway's pit road.
"It's really tough when it's 0.09 miles per hour that screws up your whole chance at a good season up," Truex anguished. "I don't know how that happened. I didn't know I was even that close, honestly. I felt like I did the same thing as every other stop. Sometimes you're just a foot -- maybe I was a foot to the left. It's so tricky when you're going from that curved section to the straight to get your lights."
Ultimately, while he explained that it's tricky to execute pit stops under caution at Bristol, due to NASCAR requiring drivers to travel down the frontstretch and backstretch pits as well as on the apron in Turns 3 and 4 as an effort to reduce the advantage of pitting on the frontstretch over the backstretch under yellow flag conditions, Truex shouldered the blame.
"And it's on me, obviously. It's my mistake," Truex admitted. "They said we were going to have to run second or third there to have a chance [to advance to the Playoffs], and I don't know if we could have done it, but it would have been nice to see.
"Just really sad for my guys. They work so hard. We had a really strong car tonight, and we got a lot of stage points. We did what we needed there. Just hate I screwed it up. I wish we could have at least seen if we could have done it. It would have been fun to have a fighting chance."
Truex continued, "You never like to let anybody down, no matter what the situation. I hate that I did that tonight."
While Truex let the No. 19 team down on Saturday night, as well as the regular season finale at Darlington Raceway a few weeks ago where he made what he called the biggest mistake of his racing career and crashed on Lap 2, the No. 19 team has had their fair share of hiccups throughout the season as well. Over his tenure at Joe Gibbs Racing, Truex and the No. 19 team have won together a lot. In 2024, they've found a way to lose together a lot.
Whether it be Truex's errors behind the wheel, pit road miscues, or strategy calls gone wrong, like when Truex ran out of gas on the final lap while running second at Sonoma Raceway earlier this year, it's been a confluence of errors that have led the No. 19 driver and team to not post a top-five finish since Kansas Speedway in May. And each of the costly errors along the way has collectively cost Truex and the No. 19 team a chance at a long Playoff run. Truex's latest error merely served as the nail in the coffin for the driver and team's championship hopes.
While his Playoff run came to a disappointing end on Saturday night, Truex and the No. 19 team will now attempt to score wins for the remainder of the season, something they've been unable to accomplish with the weight of chasing a NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Berth on their backs.
Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.