{"id":26286,"date":"2019-05-31T15:40:13","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T20:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=26286"},"modified":"2019-06-02T13:31:32","modified_gmt":"2019-06-02T18:31:32","slug":"martin-truex-jr-isnt-satisfied-with-just-three-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/31\/martin-truex-jr-isnt-satisfied-with-just-three-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Truex Jr. isn\u2019t satisfied with just three wins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Fresh off his third victory of the season last weekend, Martin Truex Jr.<\/strong><\/a> could understandably carry a little swagger into Pocono (Pa.) Raceway for Sunday\u2019s Pocono 400 (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Martin Truex Jr., driver of the #19 Bass Pro Shops\/TRACKER\/USO Toyota, applies the winner’s sticker after the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 26, 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

But the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup<\/a> champion is all business. The victories are what he expects at this point in his decorated 14-year full time career. And this Spring has been very bountiful for the New Jersey native.<\/p>\n

Anyone still curious how the transition from his championship single-car team to the long-established championship Joe Gibbs Racing operation this season has certainly seen the coordinated effort of success. Truex hasn\u2019t missed a beat.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, I would say that for a transition going from one team to another, it\u2019s been the least change I\u2019ve ever had in my career just because of the alliance what we had with JGR,” Truex said. \u201cThe cars are the same basically. Parts and pieces, a lot of them are the same. There was a lot less change.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the day, you\u2019d change teams and they did things different. You didn\u2019t know what to expect. The feeling, the way they handled things, the way they built their cars \u2026 all those things are stuff that you get used to as a driver and those feels of things you like. For me, it\u2019s really similar stuff.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/PR1_MENCS_Truex_053119.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u201cI knew what to expect,” he explained.<\/p>\n

And that really made a huge difference. What seems most satisfying for Truex, who is the defending winner of the Pocono 400, is that he has had success in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry even when the team had to make adjustments. Even when he wasn\u2019t necessarily the favorite.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think anytime you have success at a race track, it helps just because you kind of understand it a little bit,” Truex said. \u201cThat being said, with the new package, it is a lot different. There\u2019s no question.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut places that we\u2019ve had success before, it seems to translate a little bit and I think a lot of that is just driver confidence and understanding the race track and team kind of understanding it as well. Hopefully we have the right approach. It\u2019s going to be a tough weekend.”<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t necessarily proved to be any more challenging. Truex has eight top-10 finishes, including runner-up showings at Atlanta and Phoenix in addition to his three victories this season. He\u2019s led 434 of his total 459 laps out front in just his three wins.<\/p>\n

And his work at Pocono has set the bar of late. He has three top-10 finishes in the last four races on the 2.5-mile track and led laps in four of the last five races. He won in 2015 and 2018 and started from the front row three consecutive races from 2016-17.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing on a roll, it\u2019s just a credit to the team and the hard work finally coming together,” Truex said. \u201cDoing all the little things right.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know the pit crew has really come on strong and gelled as a unit and it takes everything at this level to win races and to put yourself in position consistently. Just coming together as a group and kind of starting to find that momentum. It\u2019s one of those things in this sport that\u2019s really hard to find and once you do, you want to do all you can to hang onto it because you never know when it\u2019s going to go away.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Fresh off his third victory of the season last weekend, Martin Truex Jr. could understandably carry a little swagger into Pocono (Pa.) Raceway for Sunday\u2019s Pocono 400 (2 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). But the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup champion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":26222,"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":[244,16,605,252],"class_list":["post-26286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-nascar","tag-pocono-400","tag-pocono-raceway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/362023.jpg?fit=5200%2C3640","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6PY","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26286","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\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26290,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26286\/revisions\/26290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}