Martin Truex Jr. comes up short at NH once again: 'Just the Loudon curse for me'
LOUDON, N.H. — There’s perhaps no track on the schedule that would mean more to Martin Truex Jr. to win at than New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
And yet, it’s the one that eludes him most.
The 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champ picked up his first Busch Light Pole Award for Joe Gibbs Racing on Saturday and carried that speed into the main event, clearly in possession of the best car for the majority of Sunday’s Ambetter 301 at the “Magic Mile.” Truex claimed the win in each of the first two stages — to add to his now series-leading seven — but a late pit strategy call in the final stage for two tires sunk him to the back of the top 10 after the ensuing restart and he had to claw his way back to finish an eventual fourth, despite leading a race-high 172 laps.
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“We restarted third and the 22 (of Joey Logano) got a bad jump in front of us,” Truex said on pit road following the race. “I tried to push him to get him going and the 4 (of Kevin Harvick) made us three-wide and I got put in a bad spot and lost a few spots but overall we recovered from that and just didn’t have anything to go forward on two tires. I mean, the car absolutely hated it so it was nothing like it had been all day long. And you couldn’t go anywhere, just had to ride it out and get what we could out of it.”
The northeast native has been itching to get his claws on, well, a pair of claws at the Granite State track for years, having competed here since some of his earliest days in racing. After winning the pole Saturday, he indicated that while a win Sunday would’ve essentially locked him into the playoffs, his first thoughts climbing out of his No. 19 Toyota would have been, “I just won Loudon!”
Instead, Truex’s old history of being snakebitten in races he dominates reared its ugly head once more.
“Just the Loudon curse for me, I guess,” Truex said. “I just don’t know how many times it’s gonna happen, you know? We lead all day and then we get beat on strategy or whatever it is so I don’t know. It’s just Loudon. It’s the way it’s been, you know, my whole career. It doesn’t matter how good we are, we can’t win.”
As frustrating as it is to once again miss out on hoisting a hefty crustacean in Victory Lane at Loudon — this is the fifth time he’s led 100-plus laps here and lost since 2016 alone, four of which came in consecutive races — there’s a bit more consternation for Truex and Co. to focus on at the moment.
Fellow JGR cohort Christopher Bell won Sunday’s race, ticking one more playoff spot off the board for winless drivers — such as Truex — to point their way into the playoffs. He remains second highest in the standings among those still seeking victory, but with six races left before the 16-driver field is set and 14 different winners already, Truex is by no means guaranteed a spot on points at this juncture. No driver is.
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Considering half of those six are a pair of road courses and Daytona, the potential for wild-card winners (or other title contenders such as Ryan Blaney and Harvick, who are also looking for their first win) to squeeze Truex out is very real.
“I’m very nervous about it,” team owner Joe Gibbs said during Bell’s post-race press conference. “I think all of us, I don’t think any of us would have dreamed when the year started and we would have, you know, (14) winners at this point. And so, yeah, that’s why we were pulling so hard for him to get it. And then of course, Christopher was in pretty much the same boat. And so thank goodness, Christopher was able to get it done. But we gotta give Martin everything we can give because we need that car. We need it in the playoffs. That’s for sure.”
Another thing Truex mentioned on Saturday after winning the pole — that he wasn’t nervous about making the playoffs.
The 42-year-old Cup mainstay is as unflappable as they come, but there was a clear tone change after the results of Sunday.
“I mean, it is what it is, you know,” Truex said. “Like, if another guy wins then we’re out. And, you know, that’s just the way it is. We race every week. Do the best we can to try to win races and obviously lately we’ve been capable. We’ve had cars capable winning this year. We have the most stage wins of anybody. And we haven’t won a race yet.
“You know, it’s just whatever for whatever reason, that third stage, we just muck it up, as James (Small, crew chief) can say, so we’ll just keep digging. We’ve got a great team, our guys at JGR are working really hard, our cars are fast obviously. We’re getting better, to run like this here today after our short-track season, it says a lot about all of our people. And you know for Christopher to win, it was a JGR-dominated day so that’s that says a lot and we can use that going forward. We just do all we can do. It’s all we can do.”
The Cup Series next heads to Pocono Raceway, where Truex has a pair of wins in 2015 and 2018.
Maybe that’ll do the trick, because the No. 19 ran out of magic at Loudon once again.
