Martin Truex Jr. continues to seek his first career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series short-track win.
The Furniture Row Racing driver looked like he might erase the goose egg in his short track win column in Saturday night’s Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway. He started from the pole and led a race-high 121 laps but finished 14th.
A bobble with the jack on a late pit stop proved to be Truex Jr.’s undoing. The costly stop shuffled him back in the field on the final restart.
“Pretty disappointed that we didn’t get at least a chance,” Truex Jr. said. “It’s unfortunate, but I don’t know what we have to do to win one of these short-tracks and get everything to go the way we need it to.
“Tonight we beat ourselves, so that’s unfortunate. The guys did a really good job with the race car. We were awful at the start of the race and I thought we were really in trouble. Just fought all night long and tried to stick with it and make good adjustments, and put ourselves in position to try to win another one and just came up short.”
On the bright side after two weeks of finishing 37th and 30th at Texas and Bristol, respectively, Truex Jr. was in contention Saturday night. He’ll look for a better finish next week at Talladega Superspeedway.
“Frustrated, but proud of everyone for the effort and hopefully we get them next week,” Truex Jr. said.
