Martin Truex Jr. 'ready to go' after winning Xfinity 500 pole award

For the second week in a row, Martin Truex Jr. is the pole sitter. This time for the Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway. It’s an elimination race and Truex is under the cutline by 17 points. Starting up front, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver will have command of the NASCAR field when the green flag waves today.

Before qualifying, Martin Truex Jr. said he was “optimistic.” Now, that optimism has turned into genuine results. At least so far. The pole award was hard-earned. It really looked like Ty Gibbs would earn his first Cup Series pole. Truex just had a little more speed.

It’s been an up-and-down postseason for Truex. He talked about the highs and lows of his emotions and how he tries to maintain a level head.

“Just kind of par for the course here lately,” Truex said to the media after qualifying. “Just try to be – keep your head on straight and just go out and do your job. That’s kind of what I came in here thinking about doing and today went the way we hoped it would. So, I’m proud of my guys for bringing a fast Auto Owners Camry and first pit stall is a huge deal here, so hopefully, we can use that to our advantage tomorrow.”

Martin Truex Jr. has a knack for dominating races when he wins them. He starts out front, so he’ll have a good shot at early stage points. However, we saw him fade last week due to many issues before his engine blew to give him a DNF.

The veteran driver said that there is still work to do on his car.

Martin Truex Jr. is ready for Martinsville

The Round of 8 elimination race is always dramatic. Last night the Xfinity Series got wild at the Paperclip. We saw a ton of finger-pointing at the end of that race. Now the Cup Series is set to take the track and produce some drama of its own.

Of course, Martin Truex Jr. doesn’t play into drama much. He’s just worried about making sure his car is good in the long run. But don’t get confused, he’s ready to get after it and earn a spot in the Championship 4.

“I think I feel good about how today went I think we need to work on our car a little bit more for tomorrow,” Truex said when asked about the feel of his car. “Obviously, it wasn’t, not obviously, but I didn’t feel it was quite what we needed for the long run. We got a direction there and I think today was a – practice was a really good indicator. … Thought today was a good indicator and we learned a lot. So, we know what we need to do and just gotta go do it. We’ll see what happens, I’m ready to go.”

Martin Truex Jr. has had almost everything that can go wrong go wrong in these NASCAR Playoffs. Is this the Sunday where everything goes right?