Martin Truex Jr. has his swagger back and that may be a bad thing for his fellow NASCAR Cup Series competitors.
Through 16 races, Truex has already surpassed his total top-five finishes (five) compared to last year (four) and is solidly locked into the NASCAR Playoffs with two victories.
His most recent win came in dominant fashion on Sunday at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway after leading 51 laps and notching his fourth Cup Series triumph at the 1.99-mile road course.
What’s changed for Truex, crew chief James Small and the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing team?
Team owner Joe Gibbs believes it’s simple – having the right people that gel together.
“Well, I think our team, James has got the guys… I think we’ve been fast,” Gibbs said. “I think he gets excited when he has fast cars. Top fives the two weeks previous to this. That gets him excited.
“I guess it would be like almost any driver who goes to the race track with a lot of confidence. I think it’s very important he and James have a great relationship,” Gibbs continued. “Martin – James will tell you this – may be one of the absolute best at dealing with adversity. He is just even, you know what I mean?”
Adversity has certainly shown
Rolling off the trailer for the Clash at the L.A. Coliseum in February, those improvements were on display with Truex winning the exhibition event.
That gave the No. 19 team a much-needed confidence boost.
“I talked about it right after that, that it was a big deal for us just to understand that we were making the right decisions,” Truex said. “Short tracks were a struggle for us last year. To go to the Clash and do that, it was like, ‘OK, we’re going down the right road here with the things that we’re thinking that we did last year, the things we’re working on, the direction we’re heading for short tracks.’
“That was a good confidence booster. Confidence is a huge part of this.”
That confidence runs deeper than on-track success. Tuning the car correctly and having the confidence to do so in the days leading up to a race weekend have been crucial to the team’s recent surge.
“I said it a lot. It’s not so much for the driver I don’t think. It’s more for the engineers, the crew chief, the guys that are making the big decisions on the car,” Truex said. “So many things they have to decide on before we come to the track of what they’re going to put in the car with the simulation, all the things that they have to do.
“There are a lot of assumptions, guesswork involved. You have to be confident in yourself that your intuition is part of that. It’s not just computers telling you how to set the car up. Confidence for those guys is a big thing.”
Over the last six weeks, the 2017 Cup Series champion hasn’t finished worse than eighth in five of those races. More importantly, he’s scored two victories during that span.
“When you’re going down a direction that’s working for you, you can make small tweaks,” Truex said. “It’s easier than being way out in left field and trying to figure it out, change everything at once. It’s just a work in progress.”
Above all else, an even-keeled Truex has gone through the ebbs and flows with poise. That’s something that stands out to Gibbs.
“In our technical meetings and everything, he’s the driver that’s real calm, thinking through stuff,” Gibbs said. “That’s just his personality. That’s the way he deals with things.
“But we kind of got off to a slow start. This is a big deal for us. It was great to be out in the Coliseum, have him win there, kind of get started. Now we have two more, so it’s a big deal for us.”
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