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For most drivers, a 21.3 average finish through six playoff races would mean that their title hopes ended in the Round of 16 or last Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Not the case for Martin Truex Jr.
The 2023 Cup Series Regular Season Champion scrapped and clawed through the opening rounds of the postseason. Survive and advance is rarely a superlative slung at someone who performed the best out of anyone through the first 26 races of the year, but when you look at the numbers, it’s stunning that Truex is one of eight drivers eligible to hoist the Bill France Trophy at Phoenix.
Off the bat, Truex didn’t record a single top-five or top-10 result in the first two rounds. His best finish in the postseason so far is a 17th-place effort to open the Round of 12 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Looking deeper into Truex’s current slump, he ranked 17th in points scored among all Cup drivers during the Round of 12, below Brad Keselowski, Ross Chastain and Bubba Wallace, who were all eliminated in the round. Truex currently ranks 24th in total points scored in the playoffs and is averaging 17.7 points per race in the playoffs after averaging 34 points during the regular season. (Stats provided by Racing Insights.)
The most jarring numbers show just how much of an outlier this performance has been for the driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
Truex has finished outside the top 15 in the last seven races, which is his worst streak since 2009 — his fourth full-time Cup season. Given how his outings have been, it’s no surprise Truex is just the first driver to advance to the Round of 8 despite not having a top 10 through the first two rounds.
One could make the argument that Truex benefitted off the mistakes of his fellow competitors, and there’s a case to be made for that.
It seemed as though the writing was on the wall for Truex after crashing in the opening laps at Kansas put him below the elimination line heading into the Bristol Night Race. While not having the best of races himself with a 19th-place showing, Kevin Harvick finished 29th and 2022 Cup champion Joey Logano crashed out, allowing Truex to overtake Logano to put him through to the Round of 12.
Texas and Talladega were Truex’s ticket to the Round of 8. Kyle Busch wrecked out at Texas in the closing laps of Stage 1, and Ross Chastain wrecked at a near-identical point of the race at Talladega after Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spun entering Turn 3.
Despite capitalizing on the downfall of others, Truex’s strong regular season is more the reason why he’s currently on a never-before-seen playoff run – never before has being the Regular Season Champion been so valuable and important to a playoff run.
What also flies under the radar is Truex Jr.’s ability to finish races. It’s not always the top 10s, top fives and wins that get the job done.
During the regular season, Truex failed to finish only once after getting involved in a late-race crash at Darlington in the spring. On the other hand, Kyle Busch – who also has won three races – DNF’d on five different occasions (Daytona 500, Bristol Dirt, Kansas spring, New Hampshire, Michigan).
The DNFs and stage points were the biggest difference as to why Truex’s title hopes are still alive and why Busch was eliminated at the Roval.
With Truex still in the hunt, he’s arguably still among the favorites to win his second championship despite the woes – he has, after all, won at all four tracks remaining on the Cup Series calendar in Las Vegas, Homestead, Martinsville and Phoenix.
At Las Vegas specifically, Truex has finished inside the top 10 in the last six races at the Nevada oval, and is the only driver to finish top 10 in all three races there in the Next Gen car.
Truex can only go up after how he’s fared in the playoffs so far, but no better time to start the turnaround than at Sunday’s race in Vegas (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
He’s made it this far on the strength of his regular-season title. If he finds himself back on the right side of results this weekend, the championship still looms for the No. 19 team.
