-
Bob PockrassNASCAR
PLANO, Texas — Martin Truex Jr. says he won’t change the way he races following Sunday’s finish at Martinsville Speedway. At least for the most part.
Truex took several laps to get by Joey Logano with minimal contact, but Logano executed a bump-and-run over the final two turns to pass Truex and win the race. Truex, who finished third, felt the bump was cheap, although even his friends have said Truex was too nice in that situation.
The 2017 Cup champion said Thursday that if he gets to the championship race at Homestead, he doesn’t plan to change his driver code.
“It depends on the situation and who it is,” Truex said prior to a Toyota employee day at the corporate headquarters. “I wouldn’t just wreck somebody to win a championship, just like I wouldn’t wreck somebody to win a race.
“It might be cool for a couple of hours. In 20 years, you are going to look back and say, ‘Did I really win that race or was that cheap?’ Some people might be OK with that.”
But what about the old saying that a driver would wreck his parent to win a race?
“Somebody would,” Truex said. “They’re not me.”
Truex said he has received many texts this week, including from his good friend Dale Earnhardt Jr., telling him that he is too nice on the track.
“I am who I am who I am,” Truex said. “I race how I race.
“You just can’t have one race not go your way and completely change everything about yourself. Hindsight is always 20-20. I would do it differently right now [at Martinsville] if I could do it, but I can’t. I will just put that in the memory bank for next time. What else can you do?”
As far as texts go, Truex said he also exchanged a few with Logano.
“I texted him [first] — let’s get that straight,” Truex said, in an effort to make it clear that he initiated the conversation. “He wouldn’t have probably said nothing if I hadn’t texted him.
“What would you think he’d say? … I just wanted to see what he’d say. And he said exactly what I thought he would — defending himself.”
While Truex said Logano wouldn’t win the championship following the Martinsville race, he indicated he won’t take Logano out like Matt Kenseth did three years ago at Martinsville, where Kenseth, nine laps down, drove Logano into the wall.
“I don’t see myself following Kenseth, but things have changed between us, I tell you that,” Truex said.
His experience and the reaction also has changed his approach for Martinsville in the future.
“The only thing I could have done different was knock his [butt] out of the way with two or three laps to go and drove off,” Truex said. “I didn’t do that. I thought I had kind of set the precedent that we were going to race hard for it and we were going to do it the right way. That was my first mistake.
“[I’ll race people] mostly on how people have raced me, and obviously if I get in that situation again at Martinsville where people see what happened at the end of that race as being OK, then I would probably go ahead and do that.”
Truex said he has received no criticism from his team for the way he raced.
“Nobody has told me that I had to do anything different,” he said.
The one thing Truex doesn’t want is NASCAR to try to legislate whether Logano’s move was legal. NASCAR has said that its racing is a contact sport.
“There doesn’t need to be rules on that,” Truex said. “That’s just a huge can of worms to open that up. Then you get on judgment of whether it was on accident or purpose.
“That would be a big mess. We have enough rules as it is.”