Following a Post-race technical inspection last Sunday NASCAR Cup Series Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway Austin Dillon was declared as the winner of the race.
Team Penske driver Ryan Blaney beat JGR Truex Jr. by just only three points to grab the final playoff spot after Austin Dillon claimed the other remaining playoff spot with his win.
Kurt Busch decision to withdraw meant, if there was mo new winner at Daytona this weekend, both Blaney and Truex would have made the playoffs however that wasn’t the case on Sunday.
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Martin Truex Jr. will miss the 2022 Cup Series playoffs despite finishing fourth in the in for the regular season standings.
Truex had competed in each of the last seven playoffs winning the Championship title in 2017.
The 2017 champion after the race in his post-race interview said he had no cares either way about NASCAR resuming the race.
“We really did a good job, I think, to make up 22 points in one race [which] is a big gain. Unfortunately, Martin Truex Jr. said. It just wasn’t enough today. The Bass Pro Shops Toyota was really fast; we ran, I thought, a really smart race and just wrong place, wrong time, which 30 cars out here today could say that,”
“It’s just frustrating here. We run well, and then we get wrecked. At the end of the day, we still had a somewhat decent finish, but it really doesn’t matter,”.
Truex Jr. admitted that missing out on the playoff the way he did was a tough one to take as he feel had a good chance to do something in the playoffs.
“It sucks,” Truex said of missing the playoffs. “You race your a** off all year and you work hard and you try to do all the things it takes and to come up three points short is pretty tough to swallow when I know we can do something in the playoffs.”
The 16 drivers that will contend for the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series title are: Chase Elliott, Ross Chastain, Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, Kevin Harvick, Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell, Daniel Suarez, Kyle Busch, Alex Bowman, Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon and Ryan Blaney.