NASCAR: Martin Truex Jr. subtly reveals  retirement plan

The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season has been perhaps the most up and down, frustrating year of Martin Truex Jr.’s career.

Truex, who announced his impending retirement from full-time competition at the conclusion of 2024 earlier this year, has notched four top five finishes, nine top 10 finishes, and 493 laps led this season. Those are respectable numbers, even if another driver’s penalty is what ultimately got him into the playoffs.

However, he is still without a win for the second time in three years, and currently holds his worst average finish (17.8) in a season since 2014 (20.2), which was his first season at Furniture Row Racing.

This is due in large part to a massive dip in form over the last few months, as the No. 19 team has just two top 10 finishes in the last 16 races, as well as 11 finishes outside the top 20 and five outside the top 30.

It’s a true contrast to the start of the season, when, in typical Truex fashion, he was one of the more consistent drivers in the field for a sustained amount of time and was sitting near the top of the point standings, despite remaining winless

While some of it has been poor execution, like at Sonoma Raceway, where he ran out of fuel on the final lap and crawled across the line to finish in 27th place, a lot of it has also been bad luck, such as when he blew an engine at Richmond Raceway and was taken out at Atlanta Motor Speedway in an unfortunate pileup off of turn two. The only saving grace has been the fact that the team has still had good speed in the majority of these races.

Despite being quick at Watkins Glen, Truex was the victim of bad luck once again.

The 2017 champion ran up front early, even winning the first stage and collecting valuable points. Due to this, however, he fell back to start stage two after most of the other drivers short pitted to end stage one, and he was never truly able to get back to the front and contend.

Then came the late-race chaos that produced two overtime restarts. Truex lost out big time on both, as drivers in the middle and back of the pack did everything they could, and then some, to gain a few positions. Truex ended up in a crash and picked up damage en route to a 20th place finish.

The poor result, combined with being the final driver in the playoffs, put the retiring driver 14 points below the cut line entering the final race of the round of 16 at Bristol Motor Speedway this Saturday night.

And immediately following the race, Truex sounded off