There comes a point in every racer’s career when he cannot avoid the dreaded question. For regular season champion Martin Truex Jr., that time arose at Texas Motor Speedway. After wearing tires, slow pit stops, and poor momentum in four playoff races, the Joe Gibbs racer could chalk it up as unfortunate luck. Or ask himself, ‘Is my team just not good enough’?

Hall of Famer Dale Jarrett has no qualms in simplifying the #19 driver’s conundrum. The 1999 champion did not mince his words in resting the blame squarely at the feet of Truex Jr.’s meandering team.

Veteran racer unimpressed by Joe Gibbs’ #19 team for desecrating Martin Truex Jr’s playoff season

With three wins and 25 extra playoff points, Martin Truex Jr. exuded conviction in his playoff success. Each dwindling result slowly diminished his earlier certainty. The Joe Gibbs Racing team has reduced the 2017 Champion to a cautionary tale. A stupendous season is nearing a dismaying calamity as Truex Jr. struggles to hold on to his playoff spot.

NASCAR experts could only watch with horror as their championship favorite was not even visible in the Top 15 in the past four races. Now NBC analysts Dale Jarrett and Nate Ryan have joined the baffled bandwagon.

Ryan couldn’t help but notice the widely differing pit crew performances of the #19 and #11 teams of JGR. Whereas Denny Hamlin’s crew aided his finishes by restricting his pit stops to 9.9-10.8 seconds, Truex Jr. languished on the pit road for 11.2-12.7 seconds.

Jarrett, however, believed the word ‘mediocre’ did not suffice for their collective strategy and performance. He was foremost among the people who visualized MTJ in the Championship 4 race in Phoenix. Thus, he was justifiably enraged at Joe Gibbs’ team when Texas’s 17th-place finish was discovered to be Truex Jr.’s ‘best’ playoff race.

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Dale Jarrett told Nate Ryan, “I think that you’re being kind when you say that their playoffs have been mediocre. This has been a disaster! I cannot believe that the regular season champion, I was ready to pencil Martin Truex Jr as one of the, along with Larson and Denny Hamlin, and probably William Byron. That was your championship 4 that you were looking at. And there has not been a single race from the drop of the green flag in these playoffs, and I’ve realized just four races in, there hasn’t been a single race when you said, ‘Oh yeah, there are going to be good today.'”

“Even when they qualified well, they went on the backslide to start with at Kansas as soon as they dropped the green flag. And then they ran over something and punctured a tire. So it’s just one thing after another. And you talk about these pit stops, that once again put yourself and put your driver in a bad spot. And you’re not able to run the race the way you want to. So I have no idea if they’re going to be able to make it through the next round,” he further added.

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When Martin Truex Jr. categorized the Texas race as a “long, terrible day”, he could well have stretched it to cover the entire playoffs. 18th in Darlington, 36th in Kansas, 19th in Bristol, and 17th in Texas, these numbers are so beyond MTJ’s talent and skill, it’s incomprehensible. Even his 16th-place qualifying cannot shoulder the responsibility for William Byron cruised past 17 racers to attain victory.

In fact, both Byron and Truex Jr. began the playoffs with the highest playoff points. But Hendrick Motorsports #24 team maintained their consistency with two Top 10 and one Top 5 performance before their Texas win in the playoffs. On the contrary, MTJ damaged his rear tires and the chances of a Top 10 finish at the end of Stage 1 itself. Multiple pit delays only contributed to a lackluster race.

Aware of this major discrepancy, the #19 driver could no longer defend his team’s endless follies. In the post-race interview, Martin Truex Jr. bluntly pointed out the team’s dire need for improvement. He was particularly irked with the pit stops, lashing out on the radio as well. He lamented, “So far nothing really went right at all. Today, we just really didn’t run good… On top of that, our pit stops were absolutely horrendous… Long terrible day, we need to fix it.”

Without stage points, Martin Truex Jr. required a minimum 14th-place finish in each of the Round of 12 races. Ordinarily, a walk in the park for this ace driver, the #19 team has made that a mammoth task in the playoffs. In the past three years, their unremarkable average finish of 21 at Talladega Superspeedway does not bode well for the millions of fans hoping for the champion’s miraculous recovery.

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