NASCAR: Martin Truex Jr. subtly reveals possible retirement reason

The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season has been perhaps the most up and down, frustrating year of Martin Truex Jr.'s career.

Truex, who announced his impending retirement from full-time competition at the conclusion of 2024 earlier this year, has notched four top five finishes, nine top 10 finishes, and 493 laps led this season. Those are respectable numbers, even if another driver's penalty is what ultimately got him into the playoffs.

However, he is still without a win for the second time in three years, and currently holds his worst average finish (17.8) in a season since 2014 (20.2), which was his first season at Furniture Row Racing.

This is due in large part to a massive dip in form over the last few months, as the No. 19 team has just two top 10 finishes in the last 16 races, as well as 11 finishes outside the top 20 and five outside the top 30.

It's a true contrast to the start of the season, when, in typical Truex fashion, he was one of the more consistent drivers in the field for a sustained amount of time and was sitting near the top of the point standings, despite remaining winless.

While some of it has been poor execution, like at Sonoma Raceway, where he ran out of fuel on the final lap and crawled across the line to finish in 27th place, a lot of it has also been bad luck, such as when he blew an engine at Richmond Raceway and was taken out at Atlanta Motor Speedway in an unfortunate pileup off of turn two. The only saving grace has been the fact that the team has still had good speed in the majority of these races.

Despite being quick at Watkins Glen, Truex was the victim of bad luck once again.

The 2017 champion ran up front early, even winning the first stage and collecting valuable points. Due to this, however, he fell back to start stage two after most of the other drivers short pitted to end stage one, and he was never truly able to get back to the front and contend.

Then came the late-race chaos that produced two overtime restarts. Truex lost out big time on both, as drivers in the middle and back of the pack did everything they could, and then some, to gain a few positions. Truex ended up in a crash and picked up damage en route to a 20th place finish.

The poor result, combined with being the final driver in the playoffs, put the retiring driver 14 points below the cut line entering the final race of the round of 16 at Bristol Motor Speedway this Saturday night.

And immediately following the race, Truex sounded off.

Truex Jr.'s post-race comments revealed a potential reason as to why he is retiring from full-time competition.

When Truex announced his retirement, no definitive reason was given by the NASCAR veteran, other than the ideas that it was "time to do something else" and that he couldn't commit this amount of time to it anymore.

But it has already been confirmed that he is set to return for the Daytona 500 next season, and he also plans to make a few more starts throughout the year. He still has that fire in him, and he wants to compete at times and places of his choice.

Comments like "I'm tired of this" and "I'm outta here" don't normally come from a driver who is happy with where the sport is at and wants to stick around weekend after weekend.

It's clear that he hasn't just retired because he wants to have time to do other things. There is some frustration regarding where the sport is headed, something that 2014 Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick also notices.

"I think Martin is done with it. Listening to his interview after the race, I think he’s obviously down the road to retirement, frustrated with the style of racing that comes with this particular car."

- Kevin Harvick

On-track driver conduct, or lack thereof, has led to a growing debate in NASCAR for a long while now. Several times over the last few years, many drivers, specifically veterans and even some who have recently retired, have spoken out against the alleged lack of respect on the race track.

Following the late-race events at Watkins Glen, several drivers, including Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. also took Truex's side.

"It’s different now than what it used to be. There’s certainly not a whole lot of respect among the drivers, especially in these green-white-checkered situations. We see it over and over, year after year, and it just keeps getting a little worse each year. There’s just no regard anymore. If there’s a quarter of a car width wide, someone is going to jam it in there in turn one. If you spin, that’s not their problem."

- Denny Hamlin

"I hear what he is saying. I do agree that if you drop down to Xfinity or Trucks, it just gets so much worse. They're seeing quite a bit of that happening now at the late model stock and the grassroots level. That's all true. And that's troubling, and concerning to a point. If I'm a driver, I hate it. If I'm an owner, I'm pissed off too."

- Dale Earnhardt Jr.

These are all quotes that have been made following the Watkins Glen race weekend. Several drivers, crew chiefs, and even team owners have heavily criticized NASCAR and its drivers for this over the last few years, highlighting one of the biggest and most controversial debates in the sport right now.

You can spend all day debating why this continues to happen, whether it be the cars being strong enough to be used as battering rams, the playoff format causing more aggression, NASCAR's lack of discipline for poor driving, or the simple fact that this is how the new generation of drivers race each other, whether it's fair or not.

But given how long this trend has gone on without any sort of change or condemning from NASCAR themselves, it seems relatively unrealistic that anything will be different moving forward. That's fine if NASCAR wants it that way, because for as many fans who love to watch a more traditional style of racing, there are just as many who love to see the chaos, wreckage, and drama.

However, while recent retirees such as Truex, Harvick, and even Jimmie Johnson have all said that their main reason for retiring was to have more time to themselves, you can't convince anybody that they didn't also feel the need to leave because of what has been happening on the track. It's clear that the majority of drivers, mainly its star talents, are not happy with where the sport is going.

NASCAR is a very star-driven sport. It can't afford to have more of the faces of its very core leaving for good, solely because of their frustrations with its direction.