Explained: The Curious Case of Martin Truex Jr’s Winless Streak in Texas

Martin Truex Jr will run his 665th Cup Series race at the Texas Motor Speedway this Sunday. The 1.5-mile track has long been a thorn in MTJ’s side throughout his illustrious two-decade-long NASCAR career. Although the 43-year-old has led the second-highest laps out of all active drivers at the Great American Speedway, a win has surprisingly remained elusive at Texas for the second-best average driver on intermediates.

MTJ’s last best finish in Fort Worth was a P2 at the 2020 Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 400, which saw Kyle Busch take home his fourth and final victory at TMS. But ever since the announcement of the Next Gen car in 2021, the #19 driver has been consistently average in Texas. So what is plaguing MTJ’s intermediates’ advance in the Lone Star state?

Texas: A House of Horrors for Martin Truex Jr

In all 34 races run on the Texas quad-oval, Truex Jr has only been able to average a best finish of 14.6. However, in his last three starts post-2021, JGR’s #19 star has had a best-averaging finish of an even worse 24.3 while not finishing in the top 15 in either of those three attempts. Surprisingly, the 14-time intermediate-track winner has finished in the top five at Texas, a total of only five times in NASCAR’s premier tier.

As has often been his reality this season, same-aged teammate Denny Hamlin leads JGR for most wins at TMS, with three out of thirty-three races running at TMS. But as the teammates vie in the top two averaging spots for the best active drivers on tracks above a mile and below two, MTJ has his own views surrounding the 1.5-mile-known nemesis in the Heart of Texas.

In a recent statement via Speedway Digest, he explains, “It’s been a few different things over the years. It’s always been a good track for us. In 2022, we were leading and we blew a tire. It’s been one of those places where we have been snakebit a lot. We’ve had some good runs, but we’ve had some struggles at times since they repaved it. Just one of those things, but I feel confident going there with what we have that we’ll run well, especially how we ran there the last couple of years. It’s been tough…” Tire issues have been prevalent this year too, although on short tracks, primarily at Bristol, where MTJ cracked the podium for the first time behind JGR stable-member Hamlin.

Interestingly, Texas Motor Speedway has made the bottom two spots on Jeff Gluck’s cumulative polls twice for being the worst race due to the extensive traction issues on hand throughout the last decade. A journey back through the Next Gen years will definitely reveal Truex Jr and many others’ recurring problems at the Lone Star D-oval.

Traction control is the name of the game

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Last year, in the opening race of the Round of 12, Martin Truex Jr finished P17 at Texas after an incident involving Kyle Larson and RFK owner-driver Brad Keselowski. This had caused significant damage to JGR’s #19 Camry XSE, leading to an unrecoverable track position after securing his second regular-season championship victory only a few weeks prior.

In the fall of 2022, MTJ was just one of the three drivers to face tire issues and fallout from the front of the pack in a race that saw around a dozen cautions for traction-related problems. In fact, almost two years ago, the former Cup champ was in the best position to finally claim his debut TMS victory, but a blown tire with only 66 laps to go poured water over Truex Jr’s plans, ending his day at P31.

Nevertheless, this year, the veteran New Jersey driver seems to be pushing forward with a renewed hunger. It is also important to note that Truex broke into the top 10 this season for the first time in the 2024 season’s inaugural race on another 1.5-mile intermediate track, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Moreover, now itching for his 35th victory since a glorious 301-lap advance at the 1.058-mile New Hampshire race last July, Martin Truex Jr will be looking to break a growing winless streak and the curse of the Goodyears. What better place to do it than on a track where he is still unproven to the limits?