Truex remains unsigned

[Schwartz Fan]

Frustrated over penalty, Truex remains unsigned despite good talks with DEI
By Bob Pockrass – Associate Editor
Friday, July 11, 2008


JOLIET, Ill. – While saying talks with Dale Earnhardt Inc. have made progress, Martin Truex Jr. says until he is signed and sealed to return to DEI next year, he has to be considered a candidate to be Tony Stewart’s teammate next year at Stewart-Haas Racing as well as a candidate for other open rides.

“I guess if you look around the garage, anyone who doesn’t have a contract signed for next year, you have to look at as a candidate,” Truex said Friday night after practice at Chicagoland Speedway. “Just like when the 5 car [at Hendrick] became available and Tony said everybody is going to be looking at that ride.

“That’s just the way it is. If you don’t have a deal signed right now, certainly everybody is a candidate for that deal right now.”

Dale Earnhardt Inc. has an option on Truex for next season but the driver has indicated that he has to approve some of the conditions of the new deal.

He said things have been going well in talks with DEI but he put the discussions on hold for a week after the team received a 150-point penalty Tuesday that dropped him from 14th to 18th in the standings and put him 238 points behind 12th and a spot in the Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup. There are eight races remaining until the Chase field is set.

“We’ve been working through some things, and certainly [with the penalty] last week, I said to myself, ‘This isn’t the first thing on my list right now, there are some other things we had to work through,’ ” Truex said. “We had some great things at DEI this week, some great meetings on what happened, how we’re going to fix it and the direction we’re headed as a race team.

“Hopefully this week, we’ll get back to talking about the rest of that stuff. It’s been going well, but there’s been a lot of other things on the plate for us as a race team.”

Truex knows his chances to return to the Chase are slim. He will have to race differently now that he is 238 points out of Chase contention and not just 88 and on the brink of it. He also likely will have to pass several strong drivers and teams – including Richard Childress Racing’s Kevin Harvick, Roush Fenway Racing’s David Ragan, Penske Racing’s Ryan Newman and Penske’s Kurt Busch – to make the Chase.

“[The penalty] put us in a huge deficit to make the Chase,” Truex said. “It’s kind of disappointing. There’s a shot that we can get back in the deal. Some guys are going to have to have some trouble.

“We’re going to have to have eight really great races. Guys are working hard.”

DEI is appealing the penalty, but Truex is bracing to lose crew chief Kevin “Bono” Manion and car chief Gary Putnam. They were at Chicagoland Speedway because of the appeal so their six-race suspensions won’t kick in until after the appeal is heard (unless, of course, DEI wins the appeal).

“It’s going to impact us a lot,” Truex said. “It’s going to be really, really tough on me and tough on all my guys. But we’re going to make sure we try to do a good job of putting the right person in place.

“Bono is still going to be a huge part of the way this car runs every weekend, building cars and setting things up in the shop and preparing the guy that is going to be the crew chief for the weekend on all the things I like and the things I’m looking for and the ways that he thinks he should go about getting it to me.”

The penalty was for bringing a car that did not meet NASCAR’s roof templates to opening-day inspection last week at Daytona.

“It still hurts just as bad [as last week],” Truex said. “You look at the points and it makes you sick. We were right on the edge of getting in and after the year we’ve had, to be where we were then, it felt really good.

“We’ve had a lot of tough luck and a lot of bad things happen to us and it was just icing on the cake. It was frustrating. I still don’t understand how and why it all went down.”


Frustrated over penalty, Truex remains unsigned despite good talks with DEI - Sprint Cup Series | SceneDaily.com - NASCAR News