Speeding penalty ends final Cup title run for Truex

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Martin Truex Jr. was doing everything right Saturday night in the Bass Pro Shops Bristol Night Race.

Truex was 14 points below the cutline entering the night. He helped himself significantly with finishing fourth in stage one and second in stages two and three, until a caution on lap 330 of 500.

“Sorry guys, that was on me.”

Truex dejectedly apologized to his team over the radio after speeding on pit road. He dropped to 26th, then gained a position, lost it, and gained two back from other drivers having issues.

However, Truex went a lap down and never caught the caution he needed to recover. His Cup title run ended with a 24th-place finish that put him out of the Round of 12 by 21 points.

“I guess we would have had to run second or third to make it through. Who knows if we would have been able to? I wish we could have seen if we could have done that. I’m just gutted for my team. We worked so hard this week. We all put in a lot – all season long, and in the last three weeks, just snake bit. Can’t do anything right,” Truex said.

Truex’s 24th-place finish is his 10th finish of 20th or worse in the last 11 races. The stretch started at Nashville Superspeedway with eight races to go in the regular season. He finished 24th in that race and began a slide from fourth in points to 10th by the end of the regular season, costing him six playoff points

Losing those six points in the regular season, and at least 11 points late in the race at Watkins Glen, forced Truex to go to the knife’s edge. The knife cut Truex’s championship hopes, ending what could’ve been a storybook ending with the fall of a hero who, like Kevin Harvick last year, will be remembered for better days than his present days.

“0.09 mph hurts really bad to take the chance away to know if we even could have done it. I don’t know if we could have run second – maybe. We were close to it all day – but in the end, it doesn’t matter. I feel terrible for my guys,” Truex said.

Truex wasn’t the only Joe Gibbs Racing driver who had a speeding penalty that took them out of a playoff spot.

After moving from 13th to eighth in stage one, NASCAR officials caught Ty Gibbs speeding on pit road during the stage break. Although he didn’t earn any extra points in stage two, he moved up to seventh in the closing laps. However, he faded to 15th after burning up his tires trying to get by lap car Daniel Suarez.

Suarez finished 31st and beat Gibbs for the final Round of 12 spot by 11 points.

“Just a little too loose tonight and fired off too tight. Speeding penalty is on me. You run the lights so close – it’s my fault. Unfortunate,” Gibbs expressed.

Truex and Gibbs are still winless this season. However, Truex earned a Top-5 finish earlier this season at Kansas Speedway where the Cup Series heads to next weekend.