NASCAR: Martin Truex Jr. wins Darlington Cup pole

Martin Truex Jr. will lead the NASCAR Cup Series field to the green flag for Sunday’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway after winning the pole in Saturday’s qualifying session with a hot lap of 169.409 mph.

It’s Truex’s first pole at the South Carolina race track and the 21st in his Cup Series career.

Truex said his crew made adjustments to his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota that improved the car for the final round.

“We just made the balance really good,” said Truex, who scored a pole on his 15^th different race track. “We felt good about our car in Round 1, and I knew one specific thing, if we could get it better, we’d have a shot at it. It’s been a long time, I guess, since we’ve had a pole (last year at New Hampshire Motor Speedway).

“Last year, we never really qualified all that great. We’ve been working on that a lot and really getting a lot better on that here lately.”

Bubba Wallace will join Truex on the front row after a 169.339 mph lap. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., William Byron and Ross Chastain made up the top five. Daniel Suárez, Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick and Brad Keselowski rounded out the top 10 in the starting lineup for Sunday.

“Just got me,” Wallace said after Truex knocked him out of the top spot late in the round. “But all in all, a solid start to our weekend on the Cup side. I had some fun last night in the Truck Series. I forgot how crazy those guys are-guys and gals, I’m sorry.

“I learned a little bit. We were just on the tight side last night. Definitely not tight this go-around on the Cup side. All in all, our Camry is fast. Martin’s really good here, obviously… It’s good to start up front. I’ve just got to maintain it all race. That’s going to be a big task for me.”

MARTIN TRUEX JR.,

Starting Position: 1st

Is momentum a real thing in racing?

“It’s so hard to know, but it feels that way. I just think it’s a matter of everything coming together with your team. Our cars are fast, we’re executing and things are coming together lately and it feels like momentum, but it’s just things coming together. It’s a lot, it take a lot to be running good in this series at this level consistently and I think when all those things comes together, it’s momentum. But it’s also a lot coming together behind the scenes. It’s not just some crazy thing that falls out of the sky.”

Do you feel that you are on a good string of race tracks right now?

“I felt good a few weeks ago about that, knowing that we had some good tracks coming up. I think the first six or seven races of the year maybe, things were a little up and down, but we could see that we had speed and see what we were needing to do and what we were capable of. Went to Richmond and felt like we probably should have won there and ran ourselves out of tires. Then it was nice to just get it out of the way and get the win at Dover and then last week at Kansas, felt like we had a shot to win again and had some damage mid-race that hampered that. Overall, just qualifying well and we have speed everywhere we’ve been lately at all different racetracks. The team just across the board is doing a good job and it’s fun to come to the racetrack and be fast.”

How has this new race car changed how you race at Darlington?

“Not really, I think it’s really, really similar to what we’ve done in the past through different cars and throughout the year since basically all the way back to the repave, but similar. Just this car is a bit more difficult. It’s more difficult to run fast behind a car and to run faster than the guy in front of your specifically if they’re running the same line. So it’s very challenging, but it’s really the same thing. You have to be patient and hope they’re running somewhere different than you are which typically isn’t the case. If you’re able to move around a little bit, it’s helpful.”

Qualifying Results