RICHMOND, Va. — Martin Truex Jr. has become accustomed to anticipating the speculation about his future in the NASCAR Cup Series. Saturday, the 43-year-old veteran gave a pre-emptive answer before the question could even be asked.
Truex enters Sunday’s Cook Out 400 (3 p.m. ET, USA, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) as the Cup Series points leader and a three-time winner at Richmond Raceway. He’s also found Victory Lane three times this year, and after the most recent trip — at New Hampshire Motor Speedway — he noted he was “bad at making big decisions” both about his racing career as the driver of Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 19 Toyota and a big-ticket purchase of a saltwater boat.
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Saturday at Richmond, Truex said he’d bought the boat, a mid-size vessel that’s helped him with his recent run on catching tuna. The other resolution remains undetermined.
“I’m not sure, honestly. I’ll figure it out pretty soon,” Truex said, adding later about the gravity of the decision: “It’s not an easy one, I can promise you that. Yeah, it’s a tough one to figure out.”
Truex weighed this decision heavily last year as well, announcing on June 24 that he would return to the No. 19 team for the 2023 season, saying, “The competitive side of me said I’m not done, and I’m going to keep fighting, so here we are.” Truex has acknowledged that his timetable is growing shorter by the week, and he also noted after his New Hampshire victory that this year’s success has not made a huge difference in his decision.
David Wilson, president of Toyota Racing Development (TRD) USA, said earlier this week that he’s providing Truex with as much runway as he needs to make his choice. Truex’s 2017 championship and 32 of his 34 Cup Series victories have come with Toyota, and he has been associated with Joe Gibbs Racing — either as with the team or an affiliate — since 2016.
Wilson noted that there are drivers in the Toyota development program who could potentially get a Cup Series call-up in the event that Truex elects to retire but that the decision will rest with the driver.
“I listened to an interview that Coach Gibbs gave to SiriusXM yesterday morning, and Coach was pretty candid in saying that he’s happy to give Martin as much time as he needs. That’s really a reflection on his respect for Martin, how valuable we view Martin in this partnership that we have. … We do have a pipeline and that’s one of the reasons why we have a pipeline. And of course in the background, as you expect, we’re also doing a lot of contingency planning because we have to be prepared regardless of what happens. We all know what we want to happen, but life isn’t that clean and pretty in many cases.”