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Martin Truex Jr.'s frustration growing over NASCAR’s weekly penalty reports

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during practice for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway on March 17, 2018 in Fontana, California.

Sarah Crabill

Reigning Cup champ Martin Truex Jr. is frustrated about NASCAR’s mid-week penalty reports and the perception it gives fans.

Truex’s comments came after NASCAR announced multiple penalties Wednesday. Those with violations included the winning team from the Dover Xfinity race, the runner-up from the Dover Cup race and the third-place finisher from the Dover Cup race.

The penalties led to a discussion on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio this week about the value of mid-week penalty reports — instead of sooner after the event — and how they take away from other storylines in the sport.

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Truex, seeking his third consecutive victory at Kansas Speedway, said Friday that the penalty reports bother him and fans.

“I get frustrated over Wednesday,’’ Truex said. “We get all these stories about this guy was illegal, that guy was illegal. From the fans’ point of view, they think ‘Oh everybody is cheating. This is ridiculous. I’m pissed. I don’t want to talk about this on a Wednesday,’ or ‘I don’t want to watch racing because all these guys are frauds.’ That’s kind of what people, a lot of our fans are thinking.’’

Truex suggested NASCAR needed to be more realistic with the rule book.

“You look at some of the inspection issues and I’ve seen things that happened this week and it’s like seriously, that is not why that guy ran third, that is not why that guy ran second,’’ he said. “Let’s have some common sense in the way we enforce some of these things. Wednesday inspections, you take four cars. If you took the whole field, 38 of them might have failed this particular week where you had so many that didn’t pass. I don’t know. It’s a frustrating thing.

“It’s hard to place blame on anyone. I know NASCAR is in a tough spot. They want to make the playing field level. They want everybody to feel like that everybody has got the same thing out on the race track and it’s coming down to the best driver, but there’s just so much to it and it’s so complicated. But it is frustrating to just hear about penalty after penalty after penalty.’’

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