Martin Truex Jr. might have hoped to end his final full-time Cup Series season with a bang but that doesn’t seem likely right now. The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran has registered an average finish of 28.38 over the last eight races. The last time he was on such a bad run was during his debut full-time season when his average finish over his first eight races was 30.13. It’s a full-circle moment that’s not flattering for the 2017 Cup Series champion, but a race win can turn things around.
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Truex has not won a race this season despite coming close on some occasions. The next Cup Series race is at Kansas and with no playoff points to worry about, he can drive without any pressure. He has won twice at the Kansas Speedway and earned 11 top-5 and 18 top-10 finishes. So, it is a track that has been good to him for the most part.
“It’s a place you can move around, it gets really slick and there’s a lot of tire falloff,” he said in a recent media interaction. “I really enjoy that. As good as our cars have been lately, I feel good about our chances that we’ll go there and have race-winning speed. And then it’s all about execution, which we are working on right now.”
His average finish at the track is a little over 12 and he almost improved that number earlier this season. Truex had a good chance of winning the previous Cup Series race at the track but a late caution threw a wrench in the works and he had to settle for P4.
How did Truex’s final playoff run end?
The veteran made it into the playoffs on points this season and it seemed like he would make it through to the Round of 12 by putting up a good performance in the elimination race in Bristol. The #19 car had speed and the team was executing good pit stops which helped him drive up the pack.
Truex was two points to the better of the cutline but that’s when disaster struck. He was found speeding on the pit road during the race’s final scheduled pit stop and penalized for it. That was the end of his career’s final title charge.
“They said we had to run second or third to make it through,” he said to the media afterward. “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. Just hate it that I screwed it up for everybody.”
The good thing out of all this is that the veteran can now relax. Everyone wants to have fun in their retirement season and it seemed like the whole playoff situation had him concerned at all times. That won’t be the case anymore and with no pressure, Truex will perhaps now be able to find his form and get a race win.
