Truex Jr. heads into NASCAR listing the impediments behind his...

artin Truex Jr. won’t get to celebrate a championship Sunday.

The opportunity to celebrate a victory remains, though, and that’s no small incentive for the 1998 Southern Regional High School graduate heading into the season finale at Phoenix Raceway.

The championship will go to whichever of these four drivers has the best finish Sunday: Ryan Blaney, Christopher Bell, Kyle Larson and William Byron.

Truex has struggled through the playoffs, something of a surprise for a driver won the 2017 championship and has finished runner-up three times. And he’s won three races this year, plus the season-opening exhibition race in Los Angeles on Feb. 5. But he needed a victory or at least a strong finish this past Sunday at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia to be among the four championship finalists. Instead, he finished a mediocre 12th.

“You just try to keep your head on straight and go out and do your job through the highs and the lows,” he said in a release from Joe Gibbs Racing, the team for which he drives the No. 19 Toyota Camry. “I think it just shows how tough this sport is. Anybody that races here and guys that have raced here that do the broadcasts, they’ll tell you. It’s this close, man. You find this little bit, and suddenly you look like a hero. Some other guys find some stuff, suddenly you’re not.

“We’ve been fast at times, but execution hasn’t been solid, hasn’t been consistent. We’ve had some bad luck. We’ve had a little bit of everything. Like I said, some years it feels like it’s your year, some years it feels like it’s not. I just feel we couldn’t do anything right, and when you get down to the final eight and the final four, you have can’t have anything go wrong.”

But a season-ending victory would be some consolation in a season in which he already won May 1 at Dover Motor Speedway, June 11 at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway and July 17 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. In 35 Cup starts at Phoenix, he has one win, six top-five finishes and 14 top-10s. He has led 259 laps there and driven to an average finish of 15.6. His Phoenix victory came in March 2021.

“Phoenix is very straightforward-looking, but the two ends are so different that it’s a big challenge to get your car working good, especially with the NextGen car having come around, and we are shifting a bit. It’s definitely a fun place, and it’s been really racy there the last couple of years and I enjoy going there. We struggled there in the spring with the new aero package, but I think we figured out a ton over the summer and ran well at New Hampshire and some of the other flats track and think we should be strong this weekend with our Bass Pro Shops Toyota.”

Notes: NBC will televise the race with coverage starting at 3 p.m. SiriusXM NASCAR Radio also will carry it. … Stage 1 will consist of 60 laps, Stage 2 of 125 and the final stage 127. … In 35 points races this year, Truex has driven to nine top-fives and 16 top-10s. He’s led 898 laps. … Truex has 34 career Cup wins, putting him in a tie with Kurt Busch for 25th all time.