Martin Truex Jr Carries Momentum from Clash Win into Daytona 500

He might be an established NASCAR veteran, but Martin Truex Jr is experiencing a lot of new things lately. 

The NextGen car was new to everyone last season, but Truex adjusted just fine. Despite finishing the regular season 4th in the points standings, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver did not qualify for the Playoffs. It was his first season without a win since 2014.

Fast forward to this year and Truex has already knocked a couple of items off of his "to-do" list. He finally got back to victory lane by winning at the LA Coliseum on Sunday night. This was the first win in the Clash for Truex, who was making his 16th career start in the exhibition race. Now he hopes to do something very similar next weekend at Daytona.

Truex is one of a handful of drivers with a Cup championship, but no Daytona 500 win. Like those before him (Kyle Busch, Brad Keselowski, Rusty Wallace, etc) he understands the prestige of winning, but just hasn't had the required luck to get the job done.

This will be Martin's 19th career Daytona 500 start, which is ironic with him driving the No. 19 car. He has tried his hand at this iconic race with four different teams, with a best result of 2nd in 2016 when he lost to his teammate Denny Hamlin in a photo finish. When you factor in the summer races at the track, Truex has 35 career starts at Daytona but has never won.

Though he has never been known as a superspeedway specialist, Truex did perform well in the Daytona 500 last year. He won the first two stages of the race and was one of the stronger cars for most of the afternoon. Unfortunately, it came to an end on Lap 151 when Tyler Reddick spun in front of him, collecting his No. 19 Camry.

It would be symbolic for Truex to finally earn that elusive Daytona 500 victory next Sunday. It was at Daytona last year when his playoff hopes came to an abrupt end. After a brutal finish, Truex found himself on the outside looking in. The 2017 Cup champion missed it by just three points.

"It’s just frustrating," the 42-year old said after that race. "We still had a decent finish, but it doesn’t matter. It sucks. No way of sugar coating it. You race your ass off all year, and you work hard, and you try to do all the things it takes, and you come up three points short. It’s a pretty tough pill to swallow when I know we could do something in the playoffs."

Sunday night in Los Angeles may have been the moment that sets the tone for the rest of the season for this team. It was all smiles and high-fives in victory lane. "Last year was a pretty rough season for us with no wins and to come out here and kick it off this way, just really proud of all these guys. We did not give up, and battled through, and we found ourselves in the right spot at the end.”

Truex won’t have many more shots at Daytona, and was asked if there would be a hole on his resume if he ends his career without winning the Daytona 500.

"It’s been a tough-luck track for us over the years. I would certainly like to win it. It's the biggest race in our sport. We have a great team, I think we will have a great chance, just have to make it to the end. We’ve been trying for a long time but it’s a tough race to win. Trying to be better at speedway racing is something in general that we’ve worked on over the last handful of years. I feel like we have made some gains there for sure, but still not getting the results that we want.”

With momentum now on their side, the 19 team hopes to fix that next weekend.