“Would have been fun to have a fighting chance.” As it turns out, Martin Truex Jr.’s chances lagged way behind than he expected. The No. 19 Toyota driver wanted to have a storybook ending to his illustrious 34-win Cup Series career. But instead, Truex had the complete opposite. Let alone repeating his 2017 championship run, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver ended up repeating his very first entry into NASCAR.

After Truex exited the playoffs last weekend, his miserable runs glowed on his resume. Continuous finishes of 20th or worse trailed way back to Pocono when he clinched his last top-ten. As it turns out, this drab streak came back to him in a full circle, right?

0.09 seconds mph—that was all it took to seal Martin Truex Jr. from the Round of 12

MTJ faced some disastrous incidents in the first two playoff races, involving himself in a lap 205 wreck in Atlanta. Bristol Motor Speedway held brighter hopes for him, considering his runner-up finish in the spring and 4th-place qualifying. Yet with 170 laps to go on the final pit stop, NASCAR slapped Truex with a speeding penalty and sent him to the rear of the field. He finished 24th, continuing a two-month trend.

Yet that is not the end of the story. Martin Truex Jr.‘s drab finishes of 20th or worse in the last 8 races have a precedent. According to a NASCAR expert on X, Truex repeated the sordid outcome of his very first runs in NASCAR. “Martin Truex Jr has an average finish of 28.38 over the last 8 races. This is his worst average finish over 8 races since the first 8 races of his ENTIRE NASCAR Cup Series career (30.13).” 

When MTJ first entered the sport in 2004, he took a long time to achieve glory. It was not until he joined Furniture Row Racing in 2014 that his fortunes brightened. He picked up 8 wins on the way to the 2017 championship.

Now Martin Truex Jr. is back to square one. Having been relegated outside the playoffs, the retiring driver can focus on just winning. Although his teammate Ty Gibbs is way younger, Gibbs is in a similar situation as Truex. Both entered the 2024 playoffs on a razor’s edge, hanging on just by way of their points. Both held stellar chances of excelling at Bristol, but given Goodyear’s failed experiment and twin speeding penalties for both, Truex and Gibbs fell off of the playoffs.

Despite Martin Truex Jr. drumming up hopes till his car’s last breath, NASCAR experts predicted his downfall sooner.

The finishes turned drab soon enough

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The JGR driver shone in the 2023 Cup Series with three race wins. However, thanks to a lap 3 crash in the second race of the post-season, Martin Truex Jr. lost his championship run. In 2024, Truex put up a solid start—he even led in points, gathering 4 top-fives until the Kansas race in May. But since then, the No. 19 driver plummeted in rankings. After finishing 8th at Pocono Raceway, Truex entered a sinkhole from which he has yet to escape. Veterans like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kevin Harvick gave ominous verdicts. Even The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi declared that Truex was going in the “wrong direction at the wrong time.”

Barely hanging on by a thread after Darlington and crashing out at Atlanta, Bianchi knew Truex’s fortunes would go awry. “This is not at all a driver and team that I have any confidence in. They haven’t been able to score stage points, they have no momentum, they’re not running well, they haven’t had a lot of speed in their racecars. They’re going in the wrong direction at the wrong time, and it’s been that way for a while.”

He added, “This year went from really promising in the beginning of the year of like Martin Truex Jr. looks like he’s gonna be in the championship mix, to now, it’s is he gonna get out of Round 1? Is he gonna win a race in his final year?”

Clearly, the signs were in place for some time. On the cusp of retirement, Martin Truex Jr. has lost his chance at a final championship run. Let us see if he can still manage to go out in glory with a final race victory.