"I wish we'd drive like Joey Logano" - Martin Truex Jr.'s crew chief makes surprise admission about number 19 not being aggressive enough
Martin Truex Jr.'s recent troubles in the NASCAR Cup Series postseason have prompted his crew chief James Small to draw comparisons to fellow driver Joey Logano.
With the #19 Toyota Camry TRD driver rounding off the regular season championship, the #19 crew at Joe Gibbs Racing has struggled ever since the Playoffs kicked off this season.
Coming into the final Round of 8 race of the year, Truex Jr. and the #19 crew sit 37 points short of the cut line to make it into the Championship 4. With what has been a dismal showing of form for the #19 crew and Martin Truex Jr. himself at times, the results have dried up for the team at the most crucial point of the season.
James Small, crew chief of the #19 crew at JGR, recently spoke about how, despite the lack of speed on a weekly basis, a change in Truex Jr.'s racing style could help them achieve desired results. Small elaborated on a recent episode of SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, a clip of which was posted by Kyle Dalton and said:
"It's Martin Treux, he's always timid. I wish we'd go down there and drive like Joey Logano, but we'll see. He's never gonna drive like that, and that's great if that's the way he wants to go about it, I'm fine with that."
Joey Logano has often been termed as the first of the newer generation of drivers who threw caution to the wind and went all in to achieve results.
Martin Truex Jr.'s crew chief on how the #19 driver's and Joey Logano's driving styles in NASCAR garner other drivers' reactions
Martin Truex Jr.'s crew chief James Small elaborated further on how the #19 Toyota Camry TRD driver's style of racing differed from Joey Logano's and how other drivers reacted to the same.
He said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio:
"He (Martin Truex Jr.) races everyone with the utmost respect and you can see that certain guys in the field respect that and race him that way, even some of the younger guys but then there's other guys that just don't care and use him up."
Watch Logano and Martin Truex Jr. race this weekend at the sport heads to Martinsville Speedway for the Xfinity 500. The race goes live on Sunday, October 29, 2023, at 2:00 p.m. ET.