“My Lid Popped Off”: Martin Truex Jr. Explains Aggression Towards Kyle Larson in Richmond

So Kyle Larson was right after all. At the end of the race in Richmond last Sunday, the 2021 NASCAR Cup champion found himself on the wrong side of Martin Truex Jr., who was clearly pretty mad at Larson for unclear reasons.

Larson had said of this on-track incident with Truex, “Martin… I don’t know, if I was inside of him or what, but he just hung a left and hit my right front; had me on the apron, and then turned left on me down the middle of the backstretch.”

“I think ultimately he’s just mad at Denny and I was the closest guy to take his anger out on.”

And as it turns out, this was more or less the case in reality. On Saturday, Martin Truex Jr. addressed his episode with Kyle Larson from Richmond as he admitted to giving in to his anger in the heat of the moment which led to the Larson incident.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, he slid up into me and I barely, barely got me in the side in (turn) 1 & 2, and my lid popped off,” Truex admitted. “It was fine. He didn’t do anything wrong. Like I said, it all just piled on really quickly and I lost my cool.”

“It happens.”

Martin Truex Jr. is over Richmond

Even though he was pretty visibly frustrated and angry with the way the race in Richmond turned out for him, a week from that, Truex is over all those emotions and frustrations. “It’s water under the bridge. I mean, it’s a race, it’s over,” he recently said as per NASCAR.

Truex claimed that he was frustrated considering he dominated the entire race and in the end, it went away from his hands. “I think that’s like the fifth or sixth time it’s happened to Richmond. So you just get aggravated, and it all piles on in a short amount of time in just 10 or 15 minutes, and I clearly lost my cool and did some things I’m probably not proud of,” he admitted.

Having said that, the veteran driver claimed that one can’t do anything but move on to the next week and hope to come out on top and “do a better job.” For Truex, the next week and the opportunity to do a better job is here and it is at Martinsville.

Will he be able to finally get his first win of the season? Time will tell.