Martin Truex Jr.’s No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota took significant damage when it hit the outside wall in Turn 4 on Lap 80 in Stage 1 of Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500.
Truex, who has never won at Texas Motor Speedway but came in as a pre-race favorite, took his car to the garage and was done for the day — last in the 37-car field.
The defending series champion was running in second place when the problem with the right-front tire knocked him out of the event.
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Truex indicated the problem was with a tire going down, but he wasn’t sure what caused the issue.
“I don’t know if I ran something over,” Truex said after being released from the infield care center. “Speeds are really fast here today with the cool temperatures and I don’t know if that had something to do with it or not. We’ll just have to go back and evaluate that, but all in all we were going to be in for a good day.
“We were making the car better and still had room to go. We were as fast as anybody. At least that’s a positive and we’ll go on to next week and see what we can do.”