July 18, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Missed opportunity at New Hampshire could prove costly for Martin Truex Jr.

When it comes to race tracks where Martin Truex Jr. wants to win, nothing ranks higher than New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Nothing.

Truex won the pole for the Ambetter 301. He dominated the first two stages on Sunday. Truex led 172 of 300 laps. But after the ninth and final pit stop, when the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team elected to put two tires on his Toyota, Truex fell from first to eighth for a Lap 210 restart. In 10 laps, he had dropped to 11th.

“You missed everything, man,” Truex relayed to crew chief James Small.

The disappointment was clear in the driver’s voice. As the years wind down for the former Cup champion on NASCAR’s top tour, Truex’s opportunities to win at the tracks he has yet to conquer are shrinking. But New Hampshire holds a special place in Truex’s heart. It’s where his father raced before him. And while the driver hails from New Jersey, people joke that the Magic Mile is one of Truex’s ‘home tracks.’

Kurt Busch remained on the track during the caution and assumed the lead. Busch took over the top position for Toyota—albeit temporarily. Chase Elliott restarted sixth and was carving through the cars in front of him on four tires. Christopher Bell and Kyle Busch, both on four tires, had passed their teammate not long after the race returned to green. Bubba Wallace, also from the Toyota camp, jumped from 13th on the restart to eighth by Lap 220.

Elliott caught and passed Kurt Busch with 53 laps remaining but Bell was closing in on the No. 9 Chevrolet. Within 45 laps, Truex went from being the dominant Toyota to the fourth fastest Camry in the field behind Bell, Kurt Busch and Wallace.

Using lapped traffic as a pick, Bell passed Elliott on the inside coming to the start-finish line on Lap  260, and held on for the win, with the No. 9 Chevy nearly six seconds behind. Kurt Busch held onto third for three more laps before he was forced to pit for fuel and tires. He finished 10th but opened the door for Wallace to move up to third.

Truex, who spanked the competition over the first 206 laps and increased his season stage wins to seven—the most on the Cup tour—was forced to settle for fourth. He entered the race sixth in the standings, desperately wanting and needing a win. Of the five drivers ahead of Truex in the standings, only Ryan Blaney has not won this year.  While Truex gained two positions in the point standings, he still trails Blaney by 37 points.

Bell, who became the 14th winner of the season, remains eighth in the point standings but suddenly leap-frogged over Truex on the Playoff grid due to his win.

“Typical Loudon, lead the first 200 laps and then find a way to give it away,” Truex told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio after the race. “I had an awesome race car but that’s just the way that Loudon has been for me.

“We talked this week, ‘How do we get to the end of this, right?’ I’ve been beat by two tires before after leading two-thirds of this race. Today, we take two and the car is terrible. We get smoked. I don’t know. Just too many laps left to take four, I guess. But overall, the car just didn’t like it. And it was awful compared to how it had been all day. Just a decision we made and it is what it is.”

And it all came down to strategy and the final pit stop of the race.

“We had the car to do it, we just screwed it up,” Truex said. “It’s frustrating and disappointing, but congrats to the 20 (Christopher Bell). Obviously, they were smarter than we were at the end.”

Truex has not enjoyed a banner year. Sunday was just his third top-five finish of the season. The 42-year-old driver, who has blossomed into a short track stud over the last few years and has been consistent on road courses, has earned one top-five result on tracks less than a mile (Richmond) and one top-10 road course finish, at Circuit of the Americas in March.

Still, Small believes the No. 19 team is capable of winning every week if they keep putting themselves in a position to win. On the other side of the card, the relatively new crew chief believes any team hoping to make the Playoffs will have to win to qualify.

Team owner Joe Gibbs says he felt for Truex following the race.

“To have a car like that and with everything that worked out the way it did, yeah, I think for us, we've had kind of a really up-and-down year,” Gibbs said. “Everybody kind of knows we've been off some for sure. Road racing has given us fits. So it's hard.

"New car, everything that's taken place, you just keep working hard.”

With six races to decide Playoff field, however, Gibbs is feeling the pressure.

“I'm very nervous about it,” Gibbs added. “I think all of us. I don't think any of us would have dreamed when the year started we would have 15 (actually 14) winners at this point. 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.

“Thank goodness Christopher was able to get it done, but we've got to give Martin everything we can give him because we need that car. We need it in the playoffs, that's for sure.”

Can Truex pull off a win as he has for eight of the past nine seasons? Possibly. He has won twice at Pocono, three times at Richmond and once at Watkins Glen. Truex finished 15th in the inaugural Indy Grand Prix last year and has yet to win at Michigan or Daytona.

Truex has to hope he can pass Blaney in the standings and/or no other winless driver inside the top 30 makes it to Victory Lane. The best case scenario is for previous victors to continue winning and the standings remain status quo. But with this new car and Daytona as the cut-off race, anything is possible.

“It’s frustrating,” Truex said. “We have the most stages this year, we still haven’t won a race. We just have to get it figured out, how to get that third stage figured out and get to the end of one of these things in the lead.

“I know we got the speed to do it—and the team, so we’ll just keep plugging away.”