James: Martin Truex Jr. breaks from pack early for Toyota
DOVER, Del. – Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson stood next to a black race car marinated in beer and champagne Sunday as corks popped behind him and Martin Truex Jr. and his crew celebrated. A fourth win of the season and second in the three-race first round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup made the mood festive.
Things were indeed continuing to go smashingly for Toyota, as the three-race first round of the Chase more than mirrored the 26-race regular season in which Joe Gibbs Racing and affiliate Furniture Row Racing with Truex combined to win 13 races. Truex’s win Sunday at Dover International Speedway gave the manufacturer a company best since it began competing in Sprint Cup in 2007.
Amid the celebration there was wariness, though, in this ruthless version of the Chase, in which circumstance sometimes overwhelms competitive superiority as drivers and races dwindle. And while Toyota drivers continue to pose with trophies, Wilson said that contenders undone by mistakes – such as Jimmie Johnson before a costly pit road penalty – can’t be discounted.
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“It’s easy to look at just the end result, and you could argue that we should have won New Hampshire as well, but what has noticeably changed is everyone is right on our heels,” Wilson told USA TODAY Sports. “The Hendrick guys, they’re there. Obviously, Jimmie had a car that could have won the race today as well.
“What’s encouraging is that while the competition is right on top of us, our teams are executing, and that’s what’s so important in this Chase format. There’s just no room for mistakes. It's drivers not speeding on pit lane, it’s executing those pit stops. It’s truly a team effort.”
With quality cars providing opportunities for wins and margins for error, the arithmetic still works for Toyota now, though. Defending series champion Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth and Truex absorbed five of 12 advancement spots into the second round, which is comprised of races at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.
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It’s all especially working for Truex, who dominated in winning at Charlotte in May and was equally as strong at Kansas but undone by a pit stop bobble. And that’s somewhat perplexing for team owner Joe Gibbs, whose four-driver contingent is attempting to catch Truex like everyone else. He’d like to know how Furniture Row is honing the equipment and expertise from his shop into what he considers a title-favorite program.
“l’d like to know because we’d sure do it,” Gibbs told USA TODAY Sports. “I think people are going to be picking them as the favorite because they’ve been so strong. We know at Charlotte what happened last go-round.
“I would have (to) say right now that car is the dominant car.”
Truex, after posing for waves of photographs with the many family members and friends in victory lane, effusively credits virtually everyone but himself. Crew chief Cole Pearn claims it’s “never one thing” and does much the same for a team that advanced to the championship finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway last year as a Chevrolet program. They finished fourth.
“We’ve got a good race team,” Pearn said. “We made it to Homestead last year for a reason. I feel like we’ve got better equipment this year and better technical partners and we’re in a really good situation.”
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Truex said the speed with which Furniture Row acclimated to a new manufacturer surprised him, and, he believes, owner Barney Visser. It will expand to two Cup cars next year with prized JGR/Toyota prospect and 2015 truck series champion Erik Jones.
“I think the team beat the expectations of the owner, which is something you don't normally see. So I think it's just a credit to all of our people, you know, all the guys at TRD, at Toyota that help us, that helped us put all this together and helped us build fast race cars and make sure we had all the things we needed,” Truex said.
“For me, it wasn't a big deal. I mean, our cars were fast right out of the gate, and we had some things that we had to work through, a lot of things were different, but at the same time they were all working well for us right off the bat, and it's just been fine‑tuning and finding the things that I'm looking for and the feel that I like and incorporating that into what we have.”
The overall power of the Toyota camp casts it as a monolithic force, but there are disparate levels of performance within.
“Today we were just kind of steady Eddie,” Gibbs said. “We weren’t good enough to win it, for sure, with our four. I think this is going to be real competitive and the next round gets real tight.”
Busch was second at Dover, Kenseth fifth and Denny Hamlin ninth.
Further down the grid, though, Edwards lamented his first-round performance after finishing 14th.
“We had a really pretty mediocre first few races there,” he said after placing 15th at Chicago and sixth after winning the pole at New Hampshire. “We’ve got to step it up a little bit. And we will. But I think these Toyotas are strong enough that all five could make it through to the next round. We’ve run well, but man the competition is so tough.”
And as Toyota drivers vie for eight transfer spots after the upcoming round, and an impossible four for the Homestead finale, even tougher internally.
Those intangible elements will become ever important, and Truex and Pearn are currently in control of them.
Follow James on Twitter @brantjames
