Martin Truex Jr. Gets Well-Deserved Victory to Highlight Breakthrough Season

It took 14 races, but the Sprint Cup Series finally furnished a heartwarming climax to the season’s ongoing tale of inspiration. 

That is, of course, unless Martin Truex Jr., goes on to win the Chase, now that he is in it. If that happens, it’s Rudy. Truex earned his entry into NASCAR’s championship sweepstakes with a victory in Sunday’s Axalta 400 at Pocono Raceway, located a mere 163 miles from the winner’s Mayetta, New Jersey, hometown.

In Victory Lane, on Fox Sports 1, Truex said, “Well, we finally got it. That’s all I can say. We finally got it.”

Of course, he said some more. Race winners are like actors at awards ceremonies. They’ve got to thank everybody. They’ve got to hit their marks.

Track	Finish	Laps Led	Pts. Ranking
Daytona	8	1	7
Atlanta	6	0	5
Las Vegas	2	3	4
Phoenix	7	0	3
Fontana	8	5	3
Martinsville	6	23	3
Fort Worth	9	0	3
Bristol	29	0	3
Richmond	10	0	3
Talladega	5	0	2
Kansas	9	95	2
Charlotte	5	131	2
Dover	6	131	2
Pocono	1	97	2

Truex’s third career victory—the first two occurred in 2007 and 2013—didn’t look like much of an upset. He led 97 of the 160 laps around the 2.5-mile, triangular layout after starting third. He crossed the finish line 1.346 seconds ahead of Kevin Harvick.

It felt like an upset, though. The car Truex drove seemed strangely unadorned. Tears flowed. An inordinate number of other competitors happened by to join in the celebration.

Asked why he won, Truex said, in a post-race media conference, “Honestly, because this team deserves to win and I knew that.

“Throughout my career, I’ve kind of gotten used to the disappointment, honestly, and I’ve learned to deal with those days where it didn’t go your way, even though you didn’t do anything wrong. That can get a lot of people down, but I’ve learned kind of how to deal with those [times].”

The words almost sounded as if he retrieved them from The Grapes of Wrath.

The No. 78 Chevrolet Truex pilots is the only one in owner Barney Visser’s stable. A single-car team winning a Sprint Cup race is rare in the modern era of ample resources pooled together. It happened exactly once in 2014 (A.J. Allmendinger's win at Watkins Glen). Aric Almirola won the summertime Daytona race for Richard Petty's team, but even Petty fields two regular entries.

Visser owns Furniture Row the company and Furniture Row the team. It’s almost as if the car sponsors the business, as opposed to vice-versa.

Truex’s matte-black Chevy, with simple numerals and lettering on its sides and hood, is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, where the chief growth industry isn’t NASCAR.

To be fair, Visser’s team has a cooperative arrangement with Richard Childress Racing…and is considerably outperforming its three entries.

That’s got to hurt.

Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Cole Pearn, Truex’s crew chief, said, “We have a truck that runs back and forth to North Carolina every week that brings our engines and transmissions and gears and chassis when they [RCR] need to.

“The biggest reason I work there is because it’s in Denver. Being Canadian, I love it out there. I love the outdoors, love to be able to ski and play hockey and do all those things outside of life, and it makes for a fun group.”

Once upon a time, Junior Johnson holed up in North Carolina’s moonshine country, turning out race cars that were polished gems and keeping his secrets to himself. Later, Bill Elliott’s awesome Dawsonville, Georgians dominated the sport for a while.

Times changed, and as thousands flocked to Charlotte, where the multicar teams were situated, it seemed that too many of the best and about the right number of the brightest were congregated there.

Even making the fields is an accomplishment for the dwindling single-car privateers, and yet Truex, 34, has finished in the top 10 in 13 of the season’s 14 races. Neither individually nor in total does it compare with winning at Pocono.

“It was really no battle,” said Harvick, who knows what it’s like to finish second, in his post-race media conference. “[Truex] got out there too far on the restarts.”

Asked about his eighth runner-up finish of the season—Harvick has won twice—he said, “I think you look at the situations. I think second is better than 10th. It’s a frustration that’s good in a way, and you want to be frustrated because you’re not winning, but in the end, you also don’t want to be greedy, either.”

Greedy. A race car driver. Imagine that.

Nick Laham/Getty Images

In view of the numbers, though, Truex’s victory could hardly be described as an upset. Harvick finishing second was a familiar sight. Care to guess who was third? Yep. Jimmie Johnson. Both conceded they had nothing for the Chevy in the plain black wrapper.

"Today we really didn't have pace for the '78' [Truex] or the '4' [Harvick]," said Johnson, "so we've got to get to work there. ... We're not really where we need to be, exactly."

Truex lost his grandmother last week. His longtime girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, has cancer.

Miss Pollex gave her beau a passionate embrace as the flashbulbs popped and the champagne sprayed. Victory Lanes are always joyous but not always so unrehearsed.

“[Truex] has had more to overcome personally and professionally than probably anybody sitting in a seat right now,” Johnson said, “and for him to walk in the garage every week with a smile on his face, climb in the car, put in the effort, be the great guy he is, speaks volumes.”

For many years, Truex’s chief claim to fame was his friendship with Dale Earnhardt Jr.

After finishing 11th, Earnhardt said to Fox Sports, “I was in the stall next to those guys during qualifying and saw how they are as a team, and [the way] they interact with one another really impressed me.”

Truex is the only surprise the season has produced. The current champion, Harvick, has been first or second in 10 races. The six-time champion, Johnson, is marching in the direction of a seventh with military precision, his style admirable but familiar.

Other small teams get farther and farther behind. Truex, with his Canadian crew chief and Colorado team, is not only the Great Underdog but the Only Underdog.

The sport could use a few more Disney movies.

All quotes are taken from NASCAR media, team and manufacturer sources unless otherwise noted.