Following an exchange of text messages after their run-in at Martinsville Speedway, Team Penske driver Joey Logano said Friday at Texas Motor Speedway that he and Martin Truex Jr. “know where we stand.”
The Furniture Row Racing driver appears to agree.
It was Logano who put the bumper to Truex Jr.’s No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota last week, moving Truex Jr. out of the way on the final lap and powering his way to the start/finish line to win the Round of 8 opener.
The move set off a week-long debate about short-track etiquette, how one driver races another and how a driver who feels he has been wronged should react — both on the track and off. The lasting implications are evident: Joey Logano is in the Championship 4 in Miami, and Martin Truex Jr. is peeved — and not.
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“I can’t say I was surprised that he texted,” Logano said. “I was kind of glad he did. I was planning on waiting a couple days to let things settle. We both know where we stand. We know where it’s at. It is what it is, and we move on.”
The reason for the outreach was simple.
“I didn’t expect to hear from him, so I wanted to tell him how I felt,” Truex Jr. said hours after Logano’s initial interview at Texas.
Logano, who qualified for his third career Championship 4 appearance by virtue of the win, harkened back to a previous era when pressed about the move, referencing perhaps the best-ever to put the bumper to somebody: Dale Earnhardt.
“I know it is something that I’ve seen plenty of times by a lot of greats in our sport,” Logano said of the last-lap contact. “I’m not trying to compare myself to Dale Earnhardt. I’ll never be Dale Earnhardt. I want to be the best Joey Logano I can be, not the best Earnhardt or the best Gordon. I’m trying to be the best of myself.
“Does it solidify the move any? I don’t know, maybe. But it is something I grew up watching, plenty, on TV as a kid.”
Truex Jr. gave a fiery post-race interview Sunday in which he said Logano “ain’t winning the damn war.”
The reigning 2017 series champion emphasized his comments on Thursday at a visit with Toyota employees, saying, “it’s time to stop getting run into and start running into.”
Going forward, Truex added that he’d stay true to his sportsmanlike driving style, even with a chance at a second Monster Energy Series crown on the line. But he also said his gauge for how aggressive to be would depend on the situation and his competition at that moment.
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“I wouldn’t just wreck somebody to win a championship, just like I wouldn’t wreck somebody to win a race,” Truex told ESPN.com. “It might be cool for a couple of hours. In 20 years, you are going to look back and say, ‘Did I really win that race or was that cheap?’ Some people might be OK with that.”
Truex Jr. re-emphasized that stance on Friday.
“At the end of the day, when I beat a guy, I know it’s because I outdrove him,” he said. “Not because I took a cheap shot. That’s just the way I was taught to race. I can say that every single win I’ve ever had, I earned it.”