Life Of Jason

Now, before I get into the bulk of this, the reason this is posted here instead of at the Martin Truex, Jr. website forums is because they don’t allow critical comments of Martin, DEI or anything that’s not kissy-kissy “we love you you’re so great” posts. (Maybe that’s why the message board for Truex has only 305 registered members.  Shouldn’t a NASCAR driver have a little more traffic than that?)

In light of today’s announcement that NASCAR has docked Martin Truex, Jr. 150 points, car owner Teresa Earnhardt 150 points and suspended crew chief Kevin Manion & car chief Gary Putnam for six races (also fining Manion $100,000), which essentially has eliminated Martin’s chances of making The Chase for the Sprint Cup, I feel like as a Truex fan I have to just speak my mind on this.

I picked Martin as my driver when Rusty Wallace retired and I wanted to get someone who was a rookie on the now Sprint Cup series that I could follow through their career.  Martin seemed like a very promising racer having won two Busch Series titles (yeah, I know it’s the Nationwide Series now but when he won them they were Busch.)  I actually chose him because he was from New Jersey and was a Philadelphia Eagles fan like myself.

Over the last few seasons, it’s been quite the up and down ride.  The first full year was rough as Martin really didn’t contend for wins in many races and only had two top five finishes in 36 races.  You could say that he was a rookie running his first season in the big show and it’s understandable that he would have growing pains.

That seemed to be the case when in 2007 he not only won his first race (the Autism Speaks 400 which made my son Eli very happy) but made the Chase although he died like a dog in the 10 race chase and finished 11th.  Again, you could say “well, it’s his first time in the chase…”  At least he was there, right?

Then 2008 starts and it’s a repeat of the 2006 season.  He has only two top 5 finishes and one of them was just because he stayed on the track during a caution and it rained to shorten the race.   He’s not competitive in the races and it reached the point that earlier this season I said that I now realize “my driver” is someone who likely will finish out of the top 10 and never really challenge for the win.  I put a lot of the blame on Dale Earnhardt Inc. and what seems to be a lack of top notch equipment on the #1 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet.

Still, it’s not a lot of fun to see the green flag drop and know that your guy is about to drop back about ten places in the running order.  It’s as if Martin himself has settled into joining the ranks of Scott Riggs or Dave Blaney or David Gilliland…guys who make the races and now and then get some TV time because they stayed out under a caution to lead a lap but then fade back in the pack.  Let’s be honest…how excited can you be for a guy that you know is usually out of it before the race starts?  It’s like rooting for the Royals in baseball.  Sure, they might sweep a series from the Yankees now and then but you won’t be seeing them playing October baseball any time soon.

Now, Martin’s car fails inspection at Daytona.  The middle race of the season…knowing full well the penalties and suspensions earlier this season given to teams that didn’t meet the templates used by NASCAR…and they show up with a car that doesn’t pass inspection.  This is simply inexcusable.  Everyone in that garage knew the implications of failing inspection and you should make absolutely sure that the specs given to you by NASCAR are accurate.

From the NASCAR.com story:

“”We are still trying to understand how the car fit our templates multiple times at the shop, but we respect NASCAR’s determination that one of our cars did not exactly conform to their template at the track,” John Story, DEI vice president of motorsports operations said in a statement.”

YOU DON’T KNOW HOW?  What I want to know is how Martin’s car using those DEI templates failed when the other DEI cars in the race passed inspection.  If that’s the case, the templates were not the problem in this situation and John Story looks like he’s just telling a story.   They’re spinning to try and cover someone’s rear end.

What it looks like to this fan is that people were starting to get a bit desperate down DEI way and they were trying to slip one past NASCAR.  The result?  Bye bye to the Chase.  A huge “up yours” to the fans who have been hanging in through the rough times thinking that perhaps these guys would return to the form they had in mid 2007 when you thought Martin had a shot every week.

I mean, this is an organization which as an ex-fan club member left me very unimpressed to the point that I dropped my fan club membership.  There was no real reason to be in it!  You’d pay and get a few cheap knick-knacks but that was about it.  You never had communication from Martin to his fans.  Sure, the moderators of their forums would say “Martin said to tell you all…” and then some message.  There was no interaction with the fans at all.

In fact, here’s a screen shot of his website that I took when I started to write this column:

There’s nothing about the penalty and the standings still say he’s 14th instead of 17th.  No apology to his fans.  Not even a posting of the lame explanation that it fit the templates at the garage.  (Is that a NASCAR way of saying the dog ate my homework?)

What kind of driver on a day where he’s been penalized to the point of virtually being eliminated from Chase contention doesn’t even post something to his fans?  At least Michael Waltrip took up and took his lumps at Daytona.  The other drivers didn’t run away from their fans when they had their penalties.  Just like it seems at all other times, Truex is nowhere to be seen.

When I picked Martin to follow in the wake of Rusty’s retirement, I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon of an established driver.  That’s why I resisted the urges from Missourians to pick homeboys Carl Edwards or Jamie McMurray.  Now, I’m really starting to regret my decision to pick Martin Truex, Jr.   It’s not really about his not winning either…it just seems like he doesn’t really care at all about his fans, his website won’t allow people to have honest discussions about what’s going on with their team and their performance and it seems like the whole team is going backwards.  If he wasn’t winning but was showing improvement or more consistent top ten finishes that would be wonderful.  If he was performing even close to his 2007 performance I could live with it.  As is, it seems like he’s going to end up back in the Nationwide Series within a few seasons at this rate.

I’m really not sure at this point if I’ll continue to pull for Martin.  I might wait until the end of the year to see they turn their attitudes around a little bit (even if they don’t necessarily run better.)

I know it appears I’m jumping on them when they’re down and I really don’t want to be in that kind of place.  It’s just after watching the way they’ve responded in the wake of this penalty and the general appearance of attitude over the last few years I really think this might be the last straw.