Martin Truex junior

Martin Truex junior

status	active
NASCAR Cup Series statistics
Best placement	1st - (2017)
Starts Victories Poles Top 10 522 26th 29 209
NASCAR Xfinity Series Statistics
Best placement	1. - (2004, 2005)
Starts Victories Poles Top 10 103 13 10 61
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series statistics
Best placement	77th - (2005)
Starts Victories Poles Top 10 2 - - -
Data status: end of season 2016

Martin Lee Truex Jr. (born June 29, 1980 in Mayetta , New Jersey ) is an American NASCAR racing driver. He currently drives # 78 for Furniture Row Racing in the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series . Truex won the championship in the Busch Series in 2004 and 2005.

Career

Early years

Truex's father Martin senior is a former champion in the Busch North Series , a successful driver of heavily modified touring cars, so-called "Modifieds", and a former driver in the Busch Series. Truex junior started as a racing driver in the Busch North Series in 2000 and won a total of three races for the family's own racing team in three years.

Truex junior completed his first race in the Busch Series in the 2001 season at Dover International Speedway in his father's number 56 Chevrolet. He started from 19th place and finished in 38th place due to an accident in the early stages of the race. In the 2002 season he drove a race for Phoenix Racing at New Hampshire International Speedway , which he started from 13th on the grid and finished in 29th place. Then he drove three more races for his father's team with a 17th place in Dover as the best result.

NASCAR

Nationwide Series

Truex 2008 in Daytona

He began the 2003 season as a driver in the Busch Grand National Series for his father's team before he was signed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. to drive the # 81 Chevrolet for his team Chance 2 Motorsports . Truex junior made his debut for Chance 2 at Richmond International Raceway , where he qualified sixth and led the race for a total of eleven laps. Due to a transmission problem he finished the race in 31st place. The rest of the season he drove half for his father and for Chance 2 with the exception of the race in Dover, where he started for Stanton Barrett . After finishing sixth at Bristol Motor Speedway , Truex ended the season with two consecutive second places. He completed a total of ten races in the 2003 season.

The following year, Truex junior drove the entire season for the Earnhardt junior team at Bristol Motor Speedway, taking his first career win and winning three more in the next seven races. Among them was a win at Talladega Superspeedway and the last NASCAR race at Nazareth Speedway . After the latter, Truex junior took the lead in the championship, but lost it a few races later to Kyle Busch . Due to a series of top 5 and top 10 results in the second half of the season, he took the lead in the championship again and took the title at the end of the season. In addition, he replaced Dale Earnhardt junior for a race in the Nextel Cup af the Atlanta Motor Speedway , after he was burned in an accident in a sports car race. He started in 33rd place and finished the race in 37th place.

In the 2005 season he went back to the Busch Series and defended his title. Truex junior won the first NASCAR race in Mexico as well as the races in Talladega and Dover. His first victory at Daytona International Speedway was on July 1, 2005.

Sprint Cup

In 2006 Truex Junior competed for the first time for a full season with the number 1 Chevrolet sponsored by Bass Pro Shops for Dale Earnhardt, Inc. in the Nextel Cup . He finished five races in the top 10 and the season 19th in the championship. As a two-time champion in the Busch Series, he was seen as a real challenger in the Nextel Cup, but the season went worse than expected. In the ranking of Rookie of the Year , he only finished third behind Denny Hamlin and Clint Bowyer . With 19th place in the championship, he still landed a respectable result for a newcomer. In addition to his involvement in the Nextel Cup, Truex junior also competed in six races in the Busch Series for Earnhardt and won in Talladega.

On May 19, 2007 Truex Junior won the Nextel All-Star Open and secured a place in the Nextel All-Star Challenge , which he finished in tenth place. On June 4, 2007 he won the Autism Speaks 400 his first victory in the Nextel Cup with a lead of over seven seconds over the fastest in training Ryan Newman . Truex junior led 219 of the total of 400 laps in the race. With this victory he improved to 13th place in the championship. With a third place on the Pocono Raceway and a second place on the Michigan Speedway , he secured himself participation in the Chase for the Nextel Cup in his second year in the Nextel Cup . On November 4, 2007, in the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway , he will start from pole position for the first time in his Nextel Cup career.

In the middle of the 2008 season, Truex was deducted 150 points for a non-compliant vehicle, which meant a setback in the race for the Chase . He finished the season without a win in 15th place. At the end of the 2009 season, he finished 23rd in the points. Only once did he manage to finish a race in the top five.

On October 17, 2014, it was announced that Truex Jr. moves to Furniture Row Racing . In the 2015 season, he managed to qualify with his Furniture Row Chevy not only for the Chase, but also for the final in Homestead. So he fought for the 2015 Sprint Cup title with his one-car team. He finished the season with a win and 4th place in the overall standings, just 11 points away from master Kyle Busch.

In 2016, he finished the Daytona 500 in second place just 0.011 seconds behind Danny Hamlin , the closest finish in the history of the race. After being in the lead in several races for a long time, he achieved his first victory of the season when he dominated the Coca-Cola 600 and set a new record with 392 of 400 leading laps. In September he won in Darlington , so 2016 was the first season in which Truex could claim 2 wins. He later won at Chicagoland Speedway and Dover International Speedway , but after an engine failure in Talladega , he retired from the Chase. Although he had more laps in the lead than any other driver this season, he only finished it in eleventh place.

In 2017, Truex finished the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series as champion after 8 wins and 19 top 5 results . This makes Truex the fifth driver after Bobby Labonte , Brad Keselowski , Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch to win the title in both the Busch / Nationwide / Xfinity and the Cup series as well as the sixth Cup Series Champion from the Northern United States after Bill Rexford , Alan Kulwicki , Tony Stewart , Matt Kenseth and Keselowski.

In 2018 and 2019, Truex qualified for Championship 4 with four and seven wins of the season, but lost to Joey Logano and Kyle Busch. In 2020, after nine races of the season, Truex is sixth overall, with two sixth places as the best results to date.

Web links

• Official website
• Profile on NASCAR.com
• Driver statistics on racing-reference.info

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harsh penalties for Truex junior and his team
2. ↑ NASCAR 2016: Denny Hamlin wins 58th Daytona 500 - US Racing at Motorsport-Total.com . In: Motorsport-Total.com . ( motorsport-total.com [accessed October 27, 2016]).
3. ↑ NASCAR Sprint Cup standings for 2016 - Racing-Reference.info. In: www.racing-reference.info. Retrieved December 19, 2016 .