By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service
Before last week’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Martin Truex Jr.’s 2016 season could have been summed up with a lyric from the blues standard “Born Under a Bad Sign.”
“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all,” could well have been Truex’s theme for the current campaign.
He lost the Daytona 500 to Denny Hamlin by six inches. He led 141 laps at Texas and finished sixth. He won the pole and led 172 of 267 laps at Kansas, only to have a pit road snafu drop him to 14th at the finish.
But Truex’s luck changed at Charlotte, where he turned in one of the most dominating performances in the history of NASCAR racing, leading an event- and track-record 392 laps and a single-race record 588 miles.
All told Truex has led a career-high 809 laps this season—18.8 percent of the 4,303 laps he’s completed.
And though Truex is quick to credit his Furniture Row team and the organization’s move to a factory-supported role with Toyota, the driver of the No. 78 Camry deserves plenty of credit, too.
“I’d have to give most of the credit to the team,” Truex said on Friday at Pocono Raceway, where he is the defending winner of the Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400. “I’m different. I’m doing things different. I feel different. I feel like I’m a better driver than I’ve ever been, but unless you have a great team and all the things around you it takes to be competitive at this level against these drivers against these teams … you’ve got to have it all.
“We just have to stay focused, and I think we know what it takes now. My guys are really, really smart about focusing on the right things, the right areas, giving me the information I need to be a better driver, so just got to keep focused and make sure we’re ready when the last 10 races start this year.”
Though Truex qualified 17th on Friday, failing to advance to the final round of knockout time trials, he was fourth fastest in race trim during final NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice on Saturday.
