When cars rolled onto the LA Memorial Coliseum stadium track, Martin Truex Jr. looked to rinse his mouth of the bad taste the 2023 season left in his mouth.
A regular season where Truex rebounded from a winless 2022 campaign by taking three victories and earned the regular-season title got wiped away in a messy postseason where he missed out on the top-15 in each of the first six Playoff races. His 2023 championship chase ended in the Round of 8, falling short of a second title.
The season-opening LA Clash saw Truex rise through the field from 19th at the start to 9th by the time the checkered flag fell, unable to repeat his victory in the event.
Martin meandered through Speedweeks, logging mediocre efforts in qualifying and the Duels before securing stage 1 points. Poised to get his first superspeedway victory and finally taking the sport’s biggest trophy, he lined up behind Ryan Blaney in the top lane, riding comfortably in the top-10 with less than 10 laps to go.
That’s when his race unraveled as William Byron lost control of his #24 Chevy, sending Brad Keselowski’s #6 machine into the cars leading the top lane, including the #19. The damage sustained in the collision wasn’t terminal as the #19 notched a 15th-place finish.
Atlanta gave the 19-year veteran a chance at another shot at that elusive superspeedway victory, but his Bass Pro Shops Camry didn’t have what it needed to get back into the top-10, ending the night in 12th.
Back-to-back seventh-place results at Vegas and Phoenix brought with them a mountain of stage points that propelled Truex to the point lead after a high-tally runner-up finish in Bristol where he fell just 13 laps short of victory lane when Denny Hamlin made the decisive pass.
After finding himself sandwiched between Corey Lajoie and Bubba Wallace at COTA, Truex kept his cool and charged back for his fourth top-10 in a row.
Returning to the track where Martin won his first short-track race, the #19 team took it to the competition once the track dried off from a passing storm. He assumed the lead for the first time on lap 152 that ended up in his first stage win of 2024.
Though he dominated most of the final stage, a caution for Wallace and Kyle Larson with two laps to go forced the entire field down pit road for fresh rubber. Truex’s crew was outgunned by Hamlin’s, giving the #11 the advantage for the Overtime restart.
As the two JGR cars approached the restart zone, Hamlin accelerated far before the entry to the restart zone, leaving Truex and the rest of the field in the dust. He flailed in traffic over the final mile-and-a-half, getting into an altercation with Larson on his way to the most bitter fourth-place finish of his entire career.
A day in Martinsville that started off on the right foot saw the #19 trip up as the day wore on, falling from a second-row starting spot all the way down to 18th by the time the race ended.
The poor run knocked him out of the points lead, a gap that was only exacerbated by his first two races without stage points in Texas and Talladega. Needing a turnaround, the series moved to Dover, one of Truex’s home tracks.
Right before the first stage came to a close, he outmaneuvered William Byron for the stage 1 win, his second of the season. As the former champion paced the field for the next 70 laps, Hamlin and Larson began to rise with the latter taking the lead away on lap 219.
Try as he might, Truex never found the pace from earlier in the day, staying within eyeshot of the #5 and the #11 until Hamlin nabbed the gold while he settled for the bronze.
Kansas Speedway often presented MTJ with an opportunity for victory, and the 2024 AdventHealth 400 was no different as the Auto-Owners Insurance Toyota collected points in both stages before making a final push for the win on the final Overtime restart.
When Larson and Chris Buescher crossed the line in a virtual dead heat, Martin was right behind them in fourth, less than a second short of victory.
Forgettable days at Darlington and Charlotte should have been a warning that the #19 team wasn’t performing at their best, but an engine gone sour at Gateway and a heartbreaking loss at Sonoma made matters worse.
Crew chief James Small kept Truex out after the second stage and elected a pit strategy that would put them at risk of running out of fuel before the race ended.
With 30 laps to go, it looked like Small’s strategy would pay off as Truex hounded Buescher for the next 20 laps before lunging on the inside of the turn 11 hairpin to take the lead.
There was just one issue: Kyle Larson was right there with fresher tires.
The newly-repaved Sonoma Raceway managed to eat up tire rubber on an extremely hot day, meaning Truex’s and Buescher’s older tires were at a significant disadvantage to Larson.
Before the trio made it back to the hairpin, Kyle scooted away to an eventual victory while Chris and Martin fell back. Buescher took the bronze in the Napa Valley as Truex ran out of fuel on his way to the finish, coasting across the line 27th, the final car on the lead lap.
A ho-hum performance at the inaugural Iowa event the next week was preceded by an important announcement that appeared to be brewing for a few years: Martin Truex Jr. stated that 2024 would be his final full-time season at Joe Gibbs Racing and at the Cup Series level.
For the second time, NASCAR rolled out the wet-weather tires at Loudon — the site of Truex’s most-recent victory –where the two-time Xfinity champion built up a healthier points cushion by adding points in both stages on his way to a ninth-place result.
MTJ weathered three Overtime restarts at Nashville to put himself on the front row for the fourth attempt, but his Bass Pro Shops #19 ran out of gas before taking the green flag. Forced to go down pit road, another potential win in his final season was ripped away.
Rain re-entered the conversation at Chicago for the second straight year, wreaking havoc on Truex’s day in the Windy City before a calm top-10 at Pocono also brought with it his third stage win of 2024.
Disastrous results at Indy and Richmond failed to give the team the confidence they needed down the stretch of the regular season. The bad news didn’t stop coming either when the #19 was running in the top-5 with the laps winding down at Michigan.
All of a sudden, his Auto-Owners Toyota slid into the turn 4 wall without spinning or causing major damage to the #19; despite this, a caution was still thrown. The #19 team dropped from 4th down to 24th.
The Bass Pro Shops team replicated that result at Daytona where Truex got swept into the first crash on lap 60.
Out of nowhere, Truex — a man known for his thrilling dances with the Lady in Black — found himself rudely removed from the dancefloor when he lost control of his car on lap 3 of the Southern 500, clipping the turn 1 wall and collecting Ryan Blaney.
Because of his titanic points accumulation in the season’s first 20 races, Truex and his team were able to withstand a horrendous final five races where he only accrued 56 points to make the postseason.
The Playoffs didn’t get off to the best start for the Toyota driver as Truex watched a crash develop in front of him as Chris Buescher’s Ford took off into Blaney. In an effort to avoid, MTJ ducked to the bottom of the track, right into the path of Blaney’s spinning Ford.
The collision put the 44-year-old out of the race and below the cutline for the rest of the round. A front-row start in Watkins Glen saw the veteran racer notch his fourth and final stage win of the year but fail to capitalize in the final stage before ending the day 20th.
In order for the New Jersey native to advance, he needed to gain 14 points to vault above the cutline or win at Bristol, something he hasn’t done since his first full-time season in Xfinity back in 2004.
Needless to say, that didn’t happen as the #19 found points in both stages prior to falling behind in the final stage, coming home 24th and a lap off the pace. Just like that, Truex’s chances of becoming a multi-time Cup Series champion were over.
Martin shrugged off a 19th-place starting spot at Kansas the following week by nabbing points in stages 1 and 2 before finding himself in the fight for the win after former teammate Kyle Busch spun from the lead in the closing laps.
Even though he was close to achieving his storybook ending, Martin lost out to Ross Chastain that day, getting his only top-5 of the postseason.
Martin’s pacifist strategy at Talladega ended up biting him when he got flung into the melee with five laps to go, but he was able to finish the race, ending the day 11th. A pedestrian performance at the Roval followed where the New Jerseyan logged a 21st-place-result.
His final four races in the #19 car were a mixed bag. Martin’s best finish came after a great day in Las Vegas where he notched stage points and crossed the line sixth. Following that was a mediocre run at Homestead that was chased by an equally-mediocre effort in Martinsville after taking the pole.
In a true show of his driving prowess, Truex put his car on the pole in his final race as a full-time competitor at Phoenix, stealing the headlines away from the Championship Four contenders.
Unfortunately, that qualifying pace never translated to race speed, so the #19 team’s swan song with their grizzled champion ended with a 17th-place result.
What Went Wrong
Ever since Cole Pearn left the #19 team’s pit box at the conclusion of the 2019 season, the team’s performance notably fell off from their dominant streak that started with the 2016 Coca-Cola 600 when Pearn and Truex were building up Furniture Row Racing in the #78 car.
James Small came over to replace Pearn, but the Aussie never seemed to gel with Truex in their five seasons together, especially in the NextGen era.
The 2020 season ended in the Round of 8 with just one victory to their name while 2021 was ruined in the finale when a backmarker lost a brake rotor while he led the race and the championship with 30 laps to go.
Following that was the implementation of the NextGen car. Truex struggled to adjust to the new platform, and although they sat on a mountain of points heading into the postseason, it didn’t matter as they were barred from Playoff contention for being lower than the only car that made it in on points.
2023 represented their best shot to contend again after three regular-season victories at Dover, Sonoma, and Loudon boosted the #19 team to a regular-season title, but a catastrophic 10-race stretch ensued that saw them run themselves out of title contention by failing to contend in the races.
2024 was a brutal hangover for a team that failed to put it together when it mattered most the previous year. Add on Truex’s looming retirement, and a lack of chemistry with his crew chief culminated in a campaign where they kept coming close but routinely fell short.
Had NASCAR called off the restart at Richmond in the spring, Truex likely wins that race, but I’m not sure that would’ve made much of a difference in the grand scheme of their season. It would’ve certainly made parting easier, but the #19’s path to the title seemed all but erased after the crash in the Atlanta opener.
Looking Ahead to 2025
Martin Truex Jr. will be running a partial schedule in 2025 to ease himself out of the sport.
He will make a start in the #56 Bass Pro Shops Toyota for Tricon Garage in the Daytona 500 to capture that ever-elusive victory with Cole Pearn returning to the pit box.
It is unclear what events Truex intends to enter, but his legion of loyal fans will undoubtedly be cheering for the Mayetta, NJ native when he climbs back behind the wheel.
(Top Photo Credit: Dominic Aragon/TRE)
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