Last Updated on January 19, 2023 by C-CAR
Martin Truex Jr., driver of the Furniture Row Racing Chevorlet, shares his thoughts through the NASCAR weekend at Auto Club Speedway.
If someone had told me after our final practice on Saturday that we would finish eighth, I would have said we’ll take it and let’s go home.
• DRIVER DIARY: Martin Truex Jr. not quite dialed in — yet
• MORE COVERAGE: Check out our Auto Club 400 page
We were way off after Saturday’s final practice but came out on race day and did what we needed to do. I am proud of the guys for going to work Saturday night and not being afraid to take a big swing at the setup. To go out there and run with a completely different setup than we had Friday and Saturday and come away with our fifth straight top-10 really says something about this team. We never give up and believe in each other. As mad as I was with the pit crew today I still feel they are good and we’ll get it right.
We were all over the map in track position and it appeared that we had a top-five locked as were running fifth until the final caution came out to send the race into the second green-white-checkered restart. On that last restart I wasn’t in the best spot and lost some ground (from fifth to eighth), but on the previous restart I was able to make a good gain in track position (from ninth to fifth).
• BREWSTER: A-to-Z breakdown of NASCAR Week in Fontana
• PHOTOS: Soldout crowd enjoys NASCAR race in Fontana
But considering all the obstacles that we had to contend with this weekend, I am happy with the finish. It appears that the tire test we conducted here last fall actually hurt us because we came here thinking what we needed to have based on that test. It turned out we didn’t have the proper setup until Saturday night. I just wish we could have started the weekend with the tune-up that we had on race day.
Five races into the season and we have not finished lower than eighth. That’s the kind of start when the adrenalin picks up a few paces. We’re having fun and just need to keep it going and try to improve each week.
The five top-10s we have this season equals the number of top 10s we had all of last year. And I was also told that I equaled a personal best of scoring five straight top 10s. All I can say is all is good at Furniture Row Racing and we’re ready to hit the short track in Martinsville next week.
