BRISTOL, Tenn. — Martin Truex Jr.’s final full-time Cup season will not end with a championship.
The question is will it end with a win?
Truex was among four drivers eliminated after Saturday night’s cutoff race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Two of the drivers eliminated were former champions (Truex and Brad Keselowski). Also seeing their title hopes end were Ty Gibbs, a teammate to Truex at Joe Gibbs Racing, and Harrison Burton.
Truex placed 24th — his eighth consecutive finish of 20th or worse — and finished 21 points below the cutline.
“Been getting used to swallowing disappointment lately,” Truex said on pit road after the race. “It sucks. We’ve got seven more races to try to go out on a high note with this team and hopefully win a race — that would be awesome.”
Truex was penalized for speeding on Lap 333 in the final stage and couldn’t recover from it as the race went caution-free the final 163 laps.
Truex said he was .09 mph over the pit road speed limit in one section and that’s what led to the penalty.
“You’re talking an eighth of an inch in that section,” Truex said of his team-high sixth pit road speeding penalty this season. “Pushing it too hard, I guess.”
Gibbs also had a pit road penalty ruin his night. His occurred when he stopped after the end of the first stage. That prevented him from scoring points in the second stage. He fell 11 points short of advancing to the second round.
“The speeding penalty is on me,” Gibbs said after finishing 15th. “Just we run under the lights so close, and I just got a little bit too much, I guess. My fault. Unfortunate.”
Keselowski and Burton did not have pit road problems. They had other issues that will keep them from title contention.
“We ran as hard as we could, but there wasn’t anything there,” Keselowski said after finishing 26th. “Executed what we had to execute with on pit road, and took the chances we needed to take. But just got to be faster.”
Burton had to go to the garage area after losing power steering, ending his chances of advancing.
“Earlier in the race (the steering) started to get heavier and then by the last 60 laps I ran it had just zero power steering,” Burton said after his 35th-place finish. “It just got to where I couldn’t make corrections and my arms were just so tired that I couldn’t do anymore.
“It’s a really sad way to end it, but really proud of our guys. They changed the rack really fast and got a new pump in it. We gained a couple spots just from guys wiping themselves out. We didn’t quit, but obviously a frustrating way to go.”
