{"id":14902,"date":"2018-02-23T17:04:50","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T23:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=14902"},"modified":"2018-02-24T14:01:27","modified_gmt":"2018-02-24T20:01:27","slug":"martin-truex-jr-poised-to-continue-success-at-1-5-mile-tracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/23\/martin-truex-jr-poised-to-continue-success-at-1-5-mile-tracks\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Truex Jr. poised to continue success at 1.5-mile tracks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

HAMPTON, Ga. \u2013 The very first question asked of Martin Truex Jr.<\/strong> in his press conference at Atlanta Motor Speedway Friday morning was about his comfort being back at the 1.5-mile tracks, places like Atlanta that were his bread-and-butter in his 2017 championship season.<\/p>\n

Truex smiled and made no bones about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am certainly looking forward to it,\u2019\u2019 said Truex, who scored seven of his career-best eight wins last year on the 1.5-mile tracks \u2013 a substantial part of his 19 top-fives, 26 top-10 and three-pole haul en route to claiming his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> championship.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Martin Truex Jr. (Photo by Sarah Crabill\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI had a pretty decent first practice there,\u2019\u2019 he said of Friday morning\u2019s early track time in preparation for Sunday\u2019s Folds of  Honor QuikTrip 500 (2 p.m. ET  on FOX). \u201cIt\u2019s fun to get out there and knock the rust off. It\u2019s a bit of a surprise to come here a year later and get reminded of how crazy this place is, how slick it is and how fast it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely a cool place to come knock the rust off and felt like we had a good practice. I am excited about that but as far as 1.5-mile tracks go, I think this one is very unique. It\u2019s very different than most of the rest of them and we\u2019re still looking to figure this place out. I feel like we\u2019re getting closer and hope we have a good weekend here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truex finished 18th in last week\u2019s season-opening Daytona 500 \u2013 earning a respectable 11 bonus points in the first two stages and leading four laps on the afternoon. He arrived at Atlanta ranked 12th in the standings \u2013 28 points behind first-time Monster Energy championship leader Ryan Blaney.<\/p>\n

Yet as masterful as Truex has proven himself to be on the circuit\u2019s 1.5-mile venues, the 37-year-old has never won at Atlanta. He has a pair of top fives and seven top 10s (including five in the past six races), but the closest he\u2019s come to an Atlanta Cup victory is third place in 2013. He was eighth last year.<\/p>\n

Interesting, Truex had only a single top 10 at Atlanta (ninth place in 2004) during his two-championship Xfinity Series career.<\/p>\n

Team Penske\u2019sz Brad Keselowski is the defending race winner, but with Truex\u2019s domination at the other 1.5-mile tracks last year, Atlanta would seemingly fit into his wheelhouse. The challenge is that the surface is older, the track distinctive \u2013 different in feel \u2013 from the other 1.5-milers where Truex has shown the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if you look back at that race, we did run really well and at the end of the race, we were probably the second-best car I think the 2 (Brad Keselowski) had us beat out of the pits,\u2019\u2019 Truex said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had us beat at the end but without their failure at the end we probably would have run second. I think we take it one week at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at the beginning last year we had a brand new 2018 Camry we were trying to figure out and I think we were behind the curve a little bit. To come out of the box as strong as we did in Vegas \u2013 it definitely made us feel good. And we knew we still had some development to do and some things to work on to get better. We were optimistic but you never know how it will work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truex and his No. 78 Bass Pro Shops Toyota team\u2019s focus is more big picture-oriented as a 36-race championship slate would be. But there\u2019s no doubt he\u2019d like to add Atlanta to his mile-and-a-half mastery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope to try to do it again,\u2019\u2019 Truex said. \u201cHonestly, there are a lot of good numbers there to shoot for. It\u2019s certainly going to be a challenge to duplicate. We\u2019ll just have to see.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like 1.5-mile tracks are places where I feel comfortable and places where we learned a lot as a group over the years, specifically how to approach them and what it takes. We\u2019ll see if we have what it takes to put it together again this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truex scored his first win at Las Vegas last year, essentially mounting his title run a week after the Atlanta stop. This year he seems eager to move up the timing on that trajectory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that this is a good first chance to see how we stack up against the competition and feel as compared to years past,\u2019\u2019 Truex said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great racetrack, it\u2019s a lot of fun to race here. I look forward to it. It\u2019s a good place to kick off the season as far as getting off the superspeedways. We\u2019ll just see how it goes but I feel good so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot to accomplish this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin Truex Jr. – <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ATL_MTruexJr_MediaAvailability.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. \u2013 The very first question asked of Martin Truex Jr. in his press conference at Atlanta Motor Speedway Friday morning was about his comfort being back at the 1.5-mile tracks, places like Atlanta that were his bread-and-butter in his 2017 championship season. Truex smiled and made no bones […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[52,244,16],"class_list":["post-14902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-atlanta-motor-speedway","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/KS-MENCS-Truex-Pole-102017.jpg?fit=3708%2C2473","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-3Sm","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14902"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14907,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14902\/revisions\/14907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}