Martin Truex Jr. sees another potential win slip away

Martin Truex Jr. couldn’t believe it was happening again. Not yet another race where he clearly had the fastest car, well on his way to winning, only for something to intervene and snatch victory away.

A dominate Truex started on the pole and led 172 of the first 211 laps Saturday night at Kansas Speedway. Be it a short or long green-flag run, it didn’t matter -- the No. 78 Toyota was better than any other car with Truex regularly building up multiple-second gaps on the field.

And then, as it has happened so many times previous, it all went awry.

Truex had just completed a green flag pit stop with 54 laps remaining when he noticed the right front tire was loose. Crew chief Cole Pearn told Truex to come back to pit road immediately to address the issue, which dropped him two laps behind.

“I can’t believe it, man,” Truex radioed to his crew. “I don’t know what the racing gods have against me, but boy, that sucks.”

Truex explained post-race all five lug nuts were secure, but that a bracket had broken behind the wheel causing the tire to shake. He would eventually recoup both laps he lost, but ran out of time and finished a disappointing 14th. Kyle Busch, a quasi-teammate of Truex’s, would win.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Truex said. “Went around (Turns) 1 and 2 and I was like, ‘Wheels loose.’ I kept telling myself that maybe it’s not me, maybe it’s just shaking because it has tape on it or something stupid. It was loose and I knew it right away.

“Frustrating, but that’s how it goes.”

It was the second time Truex had led the most laps in 2016 and failed to win. He was out front for 141 laps last month at Texas Motor Speedway, only to see a sequence of late cautions place him in a no-win proposition. Pearn kept Truex on the track, while most everyone else pitted. Truex fell to sixth and Kyle Busch took the victory.

In the season-opening Daytona 500 Truex finished second to Denny Hamlin in the closet finish in race history (0.010 seconds).

Truex also led the most laps in the spring Kansas race last year, but pit strategy again worked against him. In that instance Pearn had Truex pit, while the majority of the leaders stayed out. Jimmie Johnson won, Truex finished ninth.

“It’s frustrating when you’ve had it happen so many times in your career,” Truex said. “I swear, you watch guys win races that don’t have the fastest car or on fuel mileage and all this stuff and it’s like, damn. Someday I’m going to get on one of those or on the other side of one of them.

“Usually you can dominate and win, but it’s tough and it happens. It’s part of racing.”

That Truex probably should have won Saturday night wasn’t lost on Joe Gibbs, who owns Busch’s car and whose team (Joe Gibbs Racing) has a close technical alliance and provides Truex’s team with chassis and parts.

Gibbs walked over and talked with Truex on pit road immediately following the GoBowling.com 400.

“I just felt so bad for our teammate like that,” Gibbs said. ”... “They were, to be quite truthful, they were killing it all night. They were really fast.”