Martin Truex Jr. appeared to be doing everything he needed to do to advance into the Round of 12. He erased much of the 14-point deficit he entered Bristol with by collecting 16 stage points.
It was going to be close, but he had a fighting chance.
That is, until the final pit stop of the night with around 170 laps to go. Truex was running second and the team executed a perfect stop, only for MTJ to be caught speeding and sent to the rear of the field. The former Cup champion couldn't make any ground up and remained stuck outside of the top-20 for the remainder of the race.
"It's really tough when it's 0.09mph that kind of screws your whole chance at a good season up," said Truex after the race. "I don't know how that happened. I didn't even know I was that close, honestly. I felt like I did the same thing as every other stop. Sometimes you're just a foot to the left -- it's so tricky when you're going from that curved section to the straight .
"It's on me, obviously. My mistake. They said that we were going to have to run second or third there to have a chance and I don't know if we could have done it, but it would have been nice to see. Just really sad for my guys. They work so hard. We had a really strong car tonight. We got a lot of stage points, we did what we needed to there. Just hate I screwed it up. I wish we could have at least seen if we could have done it. Would have been fun to have a fighting chance."
Instead, Truex ended Bristol in 24th place, 21 points below the cut-line, ending his final run for a second Cup title in the very first round. He is joined by Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs, as well as Brad Keselowski and Harrison Burton. Tonight's disappointing result is the latest chapter in two months of misfortune for Truex, who hasn't finished higher than 20th in the last eight races.
"You never like to let anybody down, no matter the situation. I hate that I did that tonight," he concluded in his interview with NBC.
