A time to heal

After a tumultuous month on and off the race track, Martin Truex Jr. finally got some welcome news. The wrist he broke during an accident at Bristol in late August is healing.

The wrist was perhaps the least of his worries. A 50-point penalty from NASCAR, levied after Michael Waltrip Racing, the organization that fields cars for Truex, attempted to manipulate the outcome of the final regular-season Sprint Cup race at Richmond, knocked Truex out of the Chase spot he thought he had earned as a Wild Card.

Truex also suffered from the fallout, learning that his primary sponsor, auto parts retailer NAPA, was opting out of its commitment to MWR at the end of the season.

But the wrist, at least, is on the mend.

“Yeah, we started to see this week it looked a little bit better, so that was good news,” Truex said after Friday’s time trials at Dover. “The doctor was pretty certain we won’t need surgery now, which is a great–great news after all the bad news I’ve gotten here lately. So, hopefully, we’ll keep a cast on it obviously until it heals completely, and then I’ll probably wear some sort of brace at least in the race car for the remainder of the year just to make sure everything’s good, just because my wrist will be weak when I first get the cast off.

“Right now, when I get my cast switched out each week, it’s like my wrist is really stiff. It doesn’t have a lot of mobility already, so it will take me a few weeks to get that back to 100 percent. So we’ll probably have some sort of brace for the last few races at least.”