Martin Truex Jr. claims his charge into R-8 without a single top-15 finish and playoff bonus points are upsetting some rivals
Martin Truex Jr. is going through a massive slump in form in the post-season.
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Martin Truex Jr. (Via IMAGO)
Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Martin Truex Jr. entered the playoffs as the favorite to win the title by winning three races and securing the regular season championship title, defeating teammate Denny Hamlin. But in the six concluded races of the post-season, the No:19 team has been one of the most consistently inconsistent teams in the garage.
From the last six races, his best finish has been the P17, which he scored at Texas. His average finish from the first six races has been 21.3. The 2017 champion has amassed just 106 points from the six events, which is just 17 points a race. If not for the bonus points he was able to secure with the regular season title win.
But as he clawed his way out of another challenging round, he was promoted to the second seed position behind Willaim Byron after the point reset. Truex Jr. has pointed out that this point reset doesn’t really sit well with his rivals as some of them who outraced him the whole round lost the advantage after the reset.
“That’s the beauty, and that’s the thing that sucks about this deal, you know what I mean? I’m sure there’s guys that are upset. They outran us enough to get in, but they didn’t have the bonus points. It is what it is,” Martin Truex Jr. said, as reported by RACER.
“I hate that we didn’t run better today or finish better at least. I thought the first two stages, maybe our car was pretty decent, but, man, I don’t know what happened. Need to go back and look at that. It wasn’t much fun, but we made it, so here we go. We’ll try three more,” Martin Truex Jr. added.
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Martin Truex Jr. admits that with the current, he can’t get into the final four
The No:19 driver has to step up in the next round to make it to the final four races and go all out to win the second Cup title of his career. But with William Byron and Denny Hamlin in exemplary form, it might easily secure a spot in the finale; hence, securing the win or front raw finishes is his only way to get in.
Truex Jr. admitted that his team got into the final eight by using the stage points and bonus points system. But he pointed out that they can no longer bank on it to get them into the season finale at Phoenix and have to figure out what is going wrong for them.
“Stage points and bonus points. I didn’t create the system. We used it to our advantage. That won’t get us through the next one. The next one, you’ve got to be running up front. Two winners of the next three races are probably going to be playoff guys that are still going. Need to turn it up, and we need to figure it out quickly,” Truex Jr. said.
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