LOUDON, NH — The old adage is that a racer ceases to be a racer the moment he buys a boat.
That’s not a blanket statement, of course, but there is a lot of merit to the sentiment. At 43-years-old, Martin Truex Jr. is closer to being a full-time fisherman than a full-time driver but days and seasons like this make the decision awfully tough.
Truex led 85 percent of the rain-delayed Crayon 301 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Monday afternoon, 254 of 301 total laps, en route to his third NASCAR Cup Series victory of the season. In the process, he took both the championship lead and what currently projects to a playoff points lead as well.
This comes after a winless season last year, one in which he staved off retirement, only to be faced with the same decision this summer albeit under much more successful circumstances. Truex made the decision to come back this season on the final weekend of June last year and is starting to get the same questions one year later.
This time, there is a boat involved.
“I just don’t really know,” Truex said in the media center after his victory on Monday. “I don’t really know. I told someone out there, I was like, I’ve been looking at salt water boats for five or six years. I love to fish, I love spending a lot of time on the water, and I haven’t pulled the trigger on a a boat because I can’t make up my mind on what I want. I’m just bad at big decisions.
“I am finally about to buy one maybe this week. I wish I had more time to figure out what I want to do next year, but I don’t, so I’ll know soon, and you’ll know soon.”
Martin Truex Jr. having dream NASCAR season
For now, all Martin Truex Jr., crew chief James Small and team owner Joe Gibbs can do is live in the moment of a widely successful season in which they are one of the bonafide legitimate championship threats approaching the playoffs in September.
Gibbs, who is no stranger to his star athletes weighing retirement dating back to his 15 seasons as a National Football League head coach, is just as anxious as the rest of us to learn where the 2017 Cup Series champion lands in this process.
“Will you please talk to him,” Gibbs said with a laugh to the media prior to Martin Truex Jr. walking in the room.
“He tells me the same thing every year, that ‘I’m right in the middle of making this decision,’ and I tell him ‘come on, man, you’re making money, you’re having fun and you’re driving race cars,” Gibbs said. “Come on!”
Gibbs respects the process, of course, even if he really needs to know soon just so he can line up a replacement driver and make sure all the sponsorship is in place to make any such change make business sense.
“It is very important for us to have some (urgency) here because there’s pressure for all of us, it’s a huge deal for us here,” Gibbs said. “I’m hoping … and I really feel like he’s having such a great year that he’s having fun that I hope we get a great answer here soon.”
Of course, Truex very well could commit to next season, and win a second championship and reverse course anyway.
It would be a Peyton Manning in Denver moment, of sorts,
“I don’t know that running good and winning makes a difference,” Truex said. It would be pretty awesome to win the championship and walk off into the sunset.”
Actually, he would probably sail off into the sunset, but nevertheless …
Martin Truex Jr. has raced competitively every year since the late 90s, having moved from New England to North Carolina in 2000 to make a serious run at NASCAR, winning two Busch Series championships for Earnhardt owned Chance 2 Motorsports. His Cup Series career has been a tale of two stories, running for several teams that eventually closed up shop before joining Furniture Row Motorsports, where he won his championship and then moving to Gibbs after FRM also shuttered.
The past near decade has been the zenith of his career, and it’s hard to walk away from that, but it’s also taken a tremendous toll on his body and spirit to compete at this level the way that he’s had to do it until recently.
That’s to say nothing of sponsor commitments, time in the simulator and being away from home every Thursday through Sunday from February to November.
“This sport isn’t exactly what it appears all the time,” Truex said. “It takes a big commitment. My team is amazing, and they deserve the very best driver, the one who wants it more than anyone else and I’ve been that guy.
“I want to make sure that if I come back that I’m willing to do that. It takes a lot. It’s not just show up to the race track and drive a race car, go home.
“It takes a lot of commitment, a lot of travel. A lot of time missing things with family and friends and all the things I’ve done instead for 25 years. Do I want to keep doing it and am I willing to sacrifice all those things for my team?”
He just doesn’t know the answer to that beyond his laser-focused commitment to getting them to the Championship Race in November this year. Does he feel like the favorite to both get to Phoenix Raceway and then beat the likes of William Byron, Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin?
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Martin Truex Jr. said. “We’ve got to execute, and we’ve got to keep winning races. We’ve got to keep scoring points. … We just have to keep digging and doing what we’re doing.”
As for that boat, it sounds like it’s going to be in the shed by the end of the week, regardless of Truex knowing right now whether he is a full-time outdoorsman or racer.
Hendrick duo at risk of missing NASCAR Cup playoffs
It once seemed like a fait accompli that even with the missed time due to their respective injuries that both Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman would be able to qualify into the Cup Series playoff on points but that is incredibly unlikely now with just six races left in the regular season.
Elliott missed three races with a fractured tibia sustained during a March snowboarding incident in Colorado, plus the one race suspension for intentionally crashing Denny Hamlin during the Coca-Cola 600 while Bowman missed three races due to injuries sustained in a Sprint Car crash in May.
Bowman is 42 points out of a provisional playoff spot while Elliott is 60 points back.
They both, however, dodged a marginal bullet on Monday when Aric Almirola crashed out of the lead with 133 laps due a tire left loose during a pit stop during the preceding caution. Almirola took just two tires in the hopes of getting clean air over Truex, and while it’s incredibly unlikely Almirola would have ultimately won the race, any new winner currently on the outside looking in would have made it more challenging to reach the Round of 16 on points.
But again, that’s probably a moot point now given just how large their deficits are with six races remaining.
- 12. Kevin Harvick +137
- 13. Brad Keselowski +108
- 14. Chris Buescher +97
- 15. Bubba Wallace +2
- 16. Michael McDowell +1
- 17. Daniel Suarez -1
- 18. AJ Allmendinger -20
- 19. Ty Gibbs -41
- 20. Alex Bowman -42
- 21. Justin Haley -46
- 22. Austin Cindric -51
- 23. Chase Elliott -60
Aric Almirola left disappointed
Even if the two-tire decision wasn’t likely to have made the difference, Almirola and the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 10 are going to want that entire sequence back.
They ran second to Truex for much of the first half of the race and only made the two-tire call because crew chief Drew Blickensderfer felt like they had a car strong enough to hold Truex back with clean air. And maybe they could do it long enough to get to the next pit cycle where they could take four tires and then be level with Truex the rest of the way.
However, the rear tire changer struggled to connect the bolt to the wheel, and Almirola was immediately concerned he would suffer a loose tire. He even asked Blickensderfer in real time if they got both wheels tight.
He was told they had, so he sailed it deep into Turn 1 as the leader and the car suddenly broke loose under load and spun from the lead.
“Why,” Almirola asked over the radio.
“It wasn’t tight,” Blickensderfer said back.
What more can you say?
“I thought it (the right-rear) felt a little bit awkward leaving pit road, but then after that, working my tires in and going through the gears before the restart, ya know… I spun the tires a few times – everything felt normal,” Almirola said after getting released from the infield care center during the race. “I didn’t really have any concerns going into the restart, and then, obviously the right-rear wheel came off.
“So, just really, really disappointed. This race team has been working so hard to bring fast race cars to the track. I’m so proud of everybody – Drew and all the guys on our team. We’re not capitalizing when we have cars capable of running up-front. Just frustrating… disappointing… all the words you can use to describe being upset is certainly where we are. I hate it. I hate it for Smithfield. I hate it for Ford… Mobil 1, HighPoint.com, Go Bowling – everybody that puts so much into this program that we can’t get results.”
Martin Truex Jr.’s challengers left snakebit
Almirola wasn’t the only potential challenger to Truex’s dominant performance left stymied by circumstances on Monday.
Ryan Blaney ran second to Truex for most of the second half and was poised to pressure the Gibbs No. 19 team when the caution waved for a Noah Gragson crash with 31 laps remaining. Blaney left pit road third behind Truex (four tire stop) and Kyle Larson (two tire stop) but was penalized to the rear of the field for running over an air hose.
The car was dropped off the jack, the usual signal for the driver to get back on the throttle, but a loose wheel nut had the tire changer not quite ready and the penalty ended his chances at the win. Blaney ultimately finished 22nd.
Christopher Bell led the first two laps from the pole, and ran second for the entire first stage, but lost all of his track position due to needing to pit twice for a loose wheel during the first stage break pit stops. He had raced his way back to seventh with 13 laps to go when he broke loose and spun backwards hard into the wall.
He limped the car home in 29th.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.