NASCAR: Martin Truex Jr.’s first-round playoff exit was disappointing and unsurprising

Martin Truex Jr.’s hopes of a walk-off championship ended with a fitting whimper on Saturday night in Bristol.

Truex finished a lap down in 24th after a pit road speeding penalty and was eliminated from the playoffs in the first round along with Brad Keselowski, Ty Gibbs and Harrison Burton. Truex was running in the top five and had a great chance of sneaking into the second round before his speeding penalty under caution after Corey LaJoie crashed on lap 330.

The penalty dropped Truex from the top five to the tail end of the lead lap and he simply couldn’t make any progress forward. Truex was soon lapped by race winner Kyle Larson and had no chance to do anything on a restart as the final 163 laps of the 500-lap race went green.

“It’s really tough when it’s 0.9 miles per hour that kind of screws your whole chance at a good season up,” Truex said after the race. “I don’t know how that happened. I don’t know how I was even that close honestly. I felt like I did the same thing as every other stop. But sometimes you’re — maybe I was just a foot to the left … It’s on me obviously, it’s my mistake.”

Truex, 44, announced during the middle of the season that the 2024 campaign would be his last full-time run at NASCAR’s top level. He entered the season with hopes of a title and it’s instead been a miserable campaign.

Saturday night’s run was Truex’s eighth-straight finish of 20th or worse. He hasn’t finished in the top 10 since he was eighth at Pocono in July and hasn’t finished in the top five since he ran fourth at Kansas in May. Given the nature of Saturday night’s race, Truex could have easily finished in the top five had he not sped on pit road.

“You never like to let anybody down, no matter what the situation is,” Truex said. “So I hate that I did that tonight.”

Truex and his Joe Gibbs Racing team have had speed. He’s qualified in the top five in three of his last four races. Mistakes and terrible luck have simply plagued the team. Truex was caught up in crashes at both Atlanta and Watkins Glen to open the playoffs and crashed out of the regular-season finale on lap 2 when he lost control of his car underneath Ryan Blaney and slammed into both Blaney and the wall.

The 2017 Cup Series champion was one of two winless drivers to make the playoffs in 2024 and is searching for his first win since New Hampshire a season ago. After winning three times in the regular season in 2023, Truex went out in the first round of the playoffs thanks to a lap 3 crash in the second race of the postseason and a best finish of 18th in the two other first-round races.

Now he’s in the same position he was last year, with nothing to go for other than checkered flags over the final seven races of the season. Truex was unsuccessful in 2023. Can he break the awful trend and get one more win before he retires?