Is Martin Truex Jr. Poised for Another Championship?....w/Charlotte Notes

Saturday was a wild night for Martin Truex Jr. He had a right-front tire go down after hitting the wall early while leading, rebounded, then made a crazy four-wide pass on the backstretch of Charlotte Motor Speedway to take the lead and remain there for the rest of the Coca-Cola 600 (and was almost wrecked by his best friend Joey Logano in the process).

Saturday’s hard-fought victory made for Truex’s third win in the past five races, which believe it or not, makes for the most races he’s ever won in the first 13 races of a Cup Series season. In his 2017 championship season, Truex won two of his eight races and had nine top 10’s to go with them. Last year, Truex won just one race and eight top top 5’s. This year, Truex’s three wins also go with eight top 10’s, and since the Daytona 500, he has not finished outside the top 20.

Going into the season, it was hard to imagine Truex not going to victory lane at least a couple times with his new team, a well-established Joe Gibbs Racing that also has a dominant Kyle Busch and always-reliable Denny Hamlin in hand (where are you, Erik Jones?). However, his early success bears some similarities to his championship run just two years ago. Back then, for example, he also only had one finish outside the top 20.

He also has the third-most laps led this season with 459, behind his teammate Busch and Brad Keselowski. To fight problems like MTJ prevailed through Saturday is reminiscent to what Busch has had to deal with this season, which makes me think, could Kyle Busch’s biggest competitor this year be his own teammate?

Although it may be frustrating for fans to see the same driver(s) win week after week (JGR has eight wins in this season’s 13 races), it does make for interesting competition as Saturday’s wild closing laps showed.

Either way, look for MTJ to continue making a case for himself as he continues a championship-worthy charge.

Notes from Charlotte:

• It’s going to be a frustrating year for Kyle Larson fans. Déjà vu? He goes from winning a non-points race to crashing in a race at the same track that actually counts.

• Alex Bowman notched his fourth straight top-10 finish, which should tell everyone he’s no fluke. Still waiting on that coveted first win.

• Chris Buescher got his second consecutive top 10? What world are we living in?

• The Matt DiBenedetto experiment is not going well so far. He has just one top-15 finish in this season’s 13 races. Ouch.

• Give us more racing with more passing, please. Sure, the 16 cautions were annoying, but I can’t argue with 30 lead changes among 11 different drivers.