By Sarah Handy, Staff Writer
As the NASCAR off-season continues on, NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Tommy Joe Martins provided an update on his plans for 2020 in a live video on his Twitter account on Sunday evening.
The 33-year indicated he is now a “free agent”, for the time-being anyways.
“I’ve been trying to figure out our plans for next season, and what we’ve got going on. It’s a bummer but next year I’m no longer going to be with MBM Motorsports,” said Martins. “They’re going to condense down from four teams to two, is my understanding of it and I just don’t think there’s going to be a spot for me.”
As far as 2020 goes, there is potentially a couple of options for Martins.
“We own a few of our own cars, so it’s on the table that maybe we could do our own thing, we could go to another team. I’m confident that I’m going to be in a car next year, it’s just a bummer because I thought we were pretty good at times with MBM this year,” said Martins. “There’s no hard feelings. Carl and everybody there has been awesome, it has been great, and I really wish I could be back with them full-time, they want me there, I just don’t think it’s going to work out, there isn’t enough room.”
Martins indicated he has a speedway car; therefore, he plans on running the speedway races since he hasn’t gotten the chance to do that in a few years.
“We’ve got a speedway car (a Chevrolet) from Brandon Brown Motorsports that we bought a few months ago. The whole point of that was that to make sure I had a seat for the speedway races,” said Martins.
In 2019, Martins ran 18 of the 33 events on the NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule. He ran nine races with B.J. McLeod Motorsports and nine races with Carl Long’s MBM Motorsports.
Overall, Martins earned five top-20 finishes and 10 top-25 finishes on the season with a season best finish of 17th coming at ISM Raceway (Phoenix) in November.
If he has the money, do as Ryan Preece did. Instead of running a lot of races in so-so cars, run 3 with someone like Joe Gibbs, in front running cars and crew. Then if you do well, people will notice!