Kevin Harvick believes that Joe Gibbs Racing needs to make a tough decision on Martin Truex Jr. who is contemplating retirement. On his Happy Hour podcast, Harvick shared his thoughts on Truex who ran out of gas during Sunday’s race at Sonoma.
“It stinks for Martin. I think it’s one of those scenarios where he had a good car, in contention to win,” Harvick said. “They’ve had a few of those situations to where they’ve run out of gas or had something go wrong with the strategy or the car or something as they get to end of the race. It always seems like it unwinds for them at the end of these races and don’t get to Victory Lane.
“Add on top of that all the is he coming back, is he not coming back? I just think at this point instead of year after year, at this point Joe Gibbs Racing has to say, ‘Okay we got to move on. We got to do something different. There’s the chaos of the constant questions and it’s hard to build a team. We’re not winning races, we’re running good, but we’re not winning the amount of races for all the hassle and everything that goes with everything that comes with the scenario that they’re in.'”
Martin Truex Jr. talks about not having ‘enough time’
Truex knows he needs to make a decision soon so he doesn’t keep Joe Gibbs Racing waiting. But the 43-year-old is having a tough time making a decision.
“I don’t know yet. We’ll see,” Truex told NASCAR reporter Claire B. Lang last week. “It’s never enough time in this sport because you need to start planning for next year like now. It’s a tough situation to be in where I’m at right now, trying to figure out six, or eight months ahead of time. But it is what it is. There’s a lot of people that have to make plans and you don’t want to mess them up. You gotta be looking out for everybody else in these situations.”
Despite not winning a race yet this season, Truex has been driving well. So far, Truex has recorded four top-five finishes and three top-10 finishes. Truex is coming off a 2023 season that saw him win three races and finish 11th in the Cup Series standings. The New Jersey native has won 34 races and earned 287 top-10 finishes in 669 career starts.
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