MARTINSVILLE, Va. — One of Martin Truex Jr.’s greatest opportunities to finally scratch the short-track win column fizzled in another last-lap classic Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. With it, an automatic berth to the Homestead-Miami championship finale also evaporated.
Joey Logano snared the title shot that Truex thought he deserved in the First Data 500, finishing off their lengthy battle in the late going with a final-corner shove that sent both cars skittering across the start/finish line. As feverishly as the on-track action unfolded in the Round of 8 opener, almost as spirited was the post-race debate over what was fair game, given the high-pressure scenario.
MORE: Watch the wild finish
“I raced him as hard as I race everybody,” Truex said. “I took the lead from him fair and square and then he gave me a cheap shot. It’s a cheap win. I hope he’s proud of himself.”
Truex’s Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota surged into the conversation for the win with a methodical march past several daylong contenders. With the laps remaining reaching single digits, he found himself to the low side of Logano’s Team Penske No. 22 Ford, and the two cars rooted for position lap after lap.
Once Truex cleared Logano shortly after the white flag fell, Logano sized him up for the final set of turns and applied liberal amounts of front bumper. Logano had just enough momentum to finish first, with Denny Hamlin sneaking in for second place as Truex fought for control under the checkered flag.
“It was fun all the way up to the last turn, and he decided to just knock me out of the way,” Truex said. “So, I get that he wants to go to Homestead and I don’t know, man. I don’t race like that. I don’t appreciate it when others race me like that. Little bumps, obviously, we run into each other all the time, but just to deliberately knock me out of the way for the win, I thought was a cheap shot, in my opinion, and I’ll remember that if he’s in front of me coming to the checkered flag.
“He may have won the battle, but he ain’t winning the damn war,” an emotional Truex continued. “He ain’t.”
Not surprisingly, team owner Roger Penske took exception with Truex’s assertion that Logano’s tactics were not above board. Somewhat surprising was the forceful nature of his rebuttal.
WATCH: Penske on Truex: ‘He should know better’
“He’s a racer and should know better than to say that,” Penske said. “That’s as clean a shot as you can have in a race like this. … To me, I’m really looking forward. We want to go to Miami. Joey ran a great race. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just a comment that I don’t think we deserve. We’ll race him day after day. Stirring some controversy that he’s trying to spread. From my perspective, Joey drove a great race.”
Logano admitted to making a hawkish move, but expressed that his approach was far less blatant than Hamlin’s infamous nudge of Chase Elliott in last year’s playoff race at Martinsville.
“As a race car driver you think about a lot of things, but my goal was not to wreck him in any way,” Logano said. “My goal was to win the race, but I don’t want to win by dumping somebody. I want to win by making a move, and that’s the classic bump and run. That is the move that our sport — and Martinsville in particular — was built on. I feel like I owe it to my race team to do everything I can to be able to win a race and get ourselves to have another shot at a championship. That’s my job. They did their job today and I had to do mine.”
WATCH: Logano reacts to Truex’s comments
Truex had rallied all day, recovering from a starting spot in 33rd after issues in morning inspection and making a strong bid to end an 0-for-77 career drought at short tracks. Now he’ll need to regroup again over the round’s next two races at Texas and Phoenix. Truex’s postseason cushion remains strong, 25 points above the cutoff line for elimination, but the gilded opportunity for an automatic pathway to the Nov. 18 championship race still slipped away.
Some of the last-lap fireworks were a product of the high stakes; some could be attributed to Logano’s aggressive nature. Cole Pearn, Truex’s crew chief, suggested it was a bit of both.
“I guess it’s just gasoline with a match, right? A lot on the line and that’s how he races,” Pearn said. “Nothing surprising. He’ll get out and talk about short-track racing and whatever, but we passed him clean. I mean, whatever. It is what it is. Just tough to take. I mean, just wanted it really bad for this team and to be able to go to Homestead and have a shot at it. We’re still alive. Just tough to take when you’re that close.”
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