Martin Truex Jr. was grateful for a Round of 8 reset. He had to be thanking his lucky stars that he had such a strong regular season to net him 36 playoff points. He’s unfortunately had to lean on them in each of the first two rounds. Coming into Sunday’s race, Truex had finished 18th, 36th, 19th, 17th, 18th, 20th this postseason. He’s led no laps. In fact, if you go back to the regular season finale at Daytona, he had finished 18th or worse in all seven races.

That’s why Sunday was so big for him. He couldn’t afford to start off on the backfoot again. At Darlington, he finished 18th. For the Round of 12 opener at Texas, he was 17th.

But, this was at Vegas. He qualified 4th. This track is better suited for him anyways. Truex had 11 Top-8s’s in his last 12 Las Vegas starts entering this weekend. He was sixth and fifth respectively at Kansas last season and eighth and 36th this year. He’s had a Top-8 finish in four of the eight intermediate races this season too.

Could he capitalize on a great starting spot?

He did in Stage 1 coming home 5th netting him 6 stage points. Unfortunately, this is the part of the race to where it all began to unravel. His crew chief James Small made a questionable call to leave Truex out at the stage break. It was to get him in clear air and in the lead. He saw that a handful of cars pit for 2 tires on their pit stop towards the end of the opening stage and felt like with four fresh tires just a few laps earlier, why not gamble and see if it helps.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. Truex quickly fell backwards. he was 16th by time a caution came for Carson Hocevar’s crash in Turn 2 on Lap 110. He’d ride outside the top 10 for much of the rest of the way. He was 20th at the end of the second stage and looked like he was going to be below the cutline leaving here.

Then came a rebound. Truex had a great car over the final stint and would leap back into the top 10 to finish 8th in his No. 19 Toyota. That put him +3 in the standings which is far better than it was looking.

“I don’t know what we had going on,” said Truex Jr. “Restarting up front, we were pretty good, and then on the long runs, really good — I thought — probably a third-place car, but once we got back there — 16th, 18th whatever it was — it was just really bad on the restart. I would lose three, four, five spots every time and then once we got strung out and got going, I would pick them off and work our way forward, but then we would get another caution and I would lose a couple more.”

The Monday morning quarterback says they should have pit and they’d have been in contention for not just more stage points for the second stage but a likely top 5 finish in the end, but was he better than Larson or Bell? He was probably a 3rd-5th place car so that comeback to get to 9th really only lost him 4-6 points.

It was the loss of second stage points.

Still, to finally get a top 10 finish and lead a few laps could be the momentum they need.

Next up it’s to Homestead to where he has 3 top 2 finishes in his last 5 and would have been 4 if not for an issue on his final pit stop a year ago. 

Martinsville winds the Round of 8 down with Truex winning 3 of the last 8 there.

“We’ve won races this year, we’ve won the regular season championship, just got to get back to things clicking,’’ Truex, who could join Busch and Logano as the only multi-time champions in the series said on Saturday. “All it takes is having a good day today (in qualifying) and a good day tomorrow and we’re right back on track. We know what we can do. …I feel good about our team and where we’re at.

At one point, Truex was a 1.5-mile master. Among his first 19 race wins, 11 of them were on these tracks. 2 more were at Pocono and 1 at Fontana. He had just 1 win on a track that’s 1-mile in size or shorter and that was his first career win at Dover. 

Over his last 14 races wins however, 10 of which were on tracks 1-mile in length or shorter. His only wins since the end of 2019 were 3 at Martinsville (2019, 2020, 2021), 2 at Richmond, 1 at Phoenix (2021), 1 at Dover (2023), 1 at Loudon (2023), 1 at Darlington and 1 at Sonoma.