Martin Truex Jr. capped off his NASCAR Cup Sequence profession wishing he might have carried out higher at Phoenix Raceway whereas nonetheless denying these anticipating an emotional sendoff.
“No feelings,” Truex stated after ending seventeenth. “I needed to run [well], man. I needed to run higher than that and thought early on it was going to be a great day, and it simply saved getting worse and worse and worse the more durable we tried and the extra we tried to do to the automobile. I don’t know.
“It’s been [like that] currently — qualify good after which the warmer the monitor will get, the extra rubber goes down, the extra we battle. I don’t know what we received occurring there, however I want we might have put some tires on on the finish, no less than, and had a shot to go ahead. It wasn’t a lot enjoyable on the finish working on previous tires.”
Truex began from the pole in his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and led the primary 9 laps. It was the one time he spent on the entrance of the sector.
Joey Logano overtook Truex for the highest spot and gained the primary stage. Truex crossed the road second, however on the pit stops underneath the stage break warning, Truex got here off pit highway seventh and the misplaced monitor place ended up being the start of the slide backward.
“It began off nicely,” crew chief James Small stated. “We contended to win the primary stage, after which we misplaced loads of monitor positions there, and all the pieces received worse. By the center of the second stage we began to have some brake points and that simply created dealing with issues. The pedal began getting lengthy, and he couldn’t decelerate. It (the automobile) began getting tight, and it was a vicious cycle going backward.
“It began off so promising – yesterday was nice. It’s a irritating option to finish. It form of sums up our season the best way it unraveled there.”
Truex was the toast of Sunday pre-race actions. A video bundle within the driver’s assembly led to a standing ovation from his fellow rivals.
“It was sudden, I assume,” Truex stated. “It was very cool, an enormous honor. I’m very honored and humbled to be acknowledged like that.”
On the grid, it’s a process to make use of chalk to mark the automobile quantity as a placeholder for when the group brings out their automobile. NASCAR, nonetheless, didn’t use No. 19 for Truex’s automobile on Sunday however wrote “Gone Fishing” on pit highway as an alternative.
“I assumed that was cool as a result of I’m going to be doing loads of that,” Truex stated.
He has plans to run the Daytona 500 subsequent season, a race he has by no means gained. Joe Gibbs can be open to having him probably run Xfinity Sequence races for the group, however he nonetheless has no second ideas about retirement.
“Nonetheless not unhappy,” he stated. “All people needs me to be unhappy [and] I’m blissful. I’m celebrating. I’ve received rather a lot to be grateful for, rather a lot to be happy with. I’m going to take pleasure in a while off right here and do the banquet and all that enjoyable stuff, and it’s going to be enjoyable to return again in a special function and race for enjoyable.
“Hopefully I’ll be capable to have enjoyable. It’s so exhausting to have enjoyable whenever you take it this significantly, and I used to be having enjoyable early in the present day, after which it received depressing. I hoped in the present day would go higher so it’d be extra enjoyable. We’ll see. I’m trying ahead to Daytona.”
As a driver who wanted to satisfy post-race media obligations, Truex was parked close to the pit highway exit with the championship contenders. It meant he had a protracted stroll again down pit highway towards the exit. As he did so, he got here throughout Small, and the 2 stopped to not reminisce however to debrief in regards to the day, even when the data was now not related to Truex.
“Often, I don’t get to see him afterward [because] he’s sprinting,’ Small laughed. “It was good to see him. I’m certain we’ll discuss extra this week, however he’s going fishing someplace.”
