NASCAR insider reacts to Martin Truex Jr.'s crushing speeding penalty at Bristol

A NASCAR insider shared his thoughts on a costly penalty made by Martin Truex Jr. during the playoff race at Bristol Motor Speedway. On The Teardown podcast, Jeff Gluck of The Athletic reacted to Truex’s speeding penalty, which likely kept him from advancing in the playoffs.

“It was barely speeding but barely is all it takes. Unfortunately, this is a guy who is a veteran guy who you would think would not be making mistakes like this,” Gluck said. “The Darlington mistake early in the race in the opening laps, he makes that mistake. …Let’s say this had been a rookie that did those kind of things. You’d be like, ‘Well, he’ll learn and he’ll get better and veteran guy won’t make those mistakes in key moments.’

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“These were sort of key things that add up. …It’s just enough mistakes, enough small factors whether it’s his mistake, the team, whatever. Suddenly, you have a moment like (Saturday night) where it looked like he was gonna have at least a shot to get in or at least give himself a chance late in the race to be close to the cut line. Instead, he speeds, finishes 24th, misses it on points.

Martin Truex Jr. reacts to costly penalty at Bristol

Truex was racing in the top five most of the night. However, when the 43-year-old driver came down pit road on Lap 332, NASCAR informed him that he was being penalized for speeding. After the race, Truex reacted to the penalty that ended his run at another title.

“It’s really tough you know. Point zero nine miles per hour that you know kind of screws your whole chance at a good season up,” Martin Truex Jr. said. “So yeah. Just I don’t know how that happened. I didn’t know I was even that close. Honestly, I felt like I did the same thing as every other stop. But sometimes you’re just a foot maybe a foot to the left or it’s so tricky when you’re going from that curved section to the straight to get your lights. And it’s on me. Obviously, it’s my mistake.

“Yeah I mean they said we were gonna have to run second or third there to have a chance and I don’t know if we could have done it but it would have been nice to see. And just really sad for my guys they worked so hard. We had a really strong car tonight and we did, you know, we got a lot of stage points we did what we needed there. Just hate I screwed it up.”