Martin Truex Jr. will start in the second position for Sunday’s NASCAR championship race.
Team president, Joe Garone, said the team really wanted to win the pole and they were so close to getting it.
The 78 car was in the top position after the first two rounds of qualifying but got passed up by Denny Hamlin in the final round by .005 seconds. Truex was the best of the four drivers that are in contention for the title, but the Furniture Row team was hoping for the front pit box on Sunday.
“Definitely would have like to be first, but all the playoff guys are behind us, or the championship 4,
they’re all behind us, Truex said. “So out of them, we’re the best and that’s where you want to be, win every practice, win every qualifying session. We’ve had a good record out of the second position, we’ve had a lot of wins from the second position, so we’re good to go, ready to go racing on Sunday.”
“We’re on 'kill.' We know that if we want to win the championship, we need to take it,” Garone said. “We can’t be conservative, we need to put everything out there. We’re going to go into our practices (Saturday) and that’s how we’re going to attack the race. We’re going to attack.”
Many consider Truex the favorite and a NASCAR championship coming back to Denver would be
unprecedented.
“Our owner and Furniture Row has put so much into this program over the years, and with all of us
being from Denver it would be everything to bring this back to Denver,”Garone told 9NEWS. “It would just mean the world to have the Denver fans, and there’s a lot of fans in other states around Colorado, be able to come into the showroom in Furniture Row, which is where we are going to display this trophy and see the Cup Series trophy right there.”
Truex spent his night at the track on Friday. He finished qualifying and then went to watch his brother, Ryan, compete in the truck series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Ryan finished fourth.
Truex has a couple of practice sessions scheduled on the track for Saturday and then it will be waiting for the green flag Sunday afternoon.
