NASCAR Cup Series

Can Martin Truex Jr win again?

Published Jun. 24, 2013 1:00 a.m. ET

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Larry McReynolds

After their big win Sunday at Sonoma, race fans have already been asking me if we could we see more wins yet this season out of Martin Truex Jr. and the No. 56 team. I know I wouldn’t rule it out. Poor Martin has been in one heck of a dry spell. His only other win in his NASCAR Sprint Cup career was six years ago at Dover. Now that a span of 218 races.

I really don’t believe this was just a flash-in-the-pan deal. They’ve been running well enough all year to win several races. They were good in the Daytona 500, but had an engine failure. As I mentioned earlier, they were good at Texas but got beat on pit road on the last stop. And then at Dover, it looked like they were going to be in a position to be a strong competitor and had engine failure there.

Martin runs really well at the mile and a half tracks. He and the team are carrying a ton of positive momentum into this Saturday night race. It really isn’t out of the realm of possibility that you could go from a driver that went 218 races without winning to possibly getting two in a row at Sonoma and Kentucky for he and the team.

I’m always tickled to see a driver get their first win or in Martin’s case, his first win in six long years. Being a former crew chief though, I am absolutely thrilled to see a crew chief get his first win, which is the case for the No. 56’s Chad Johnson. So a big congratulations to him!

I just want to add a final word about Michael Waltrip Racing. Just a few years ago they were struggling to even qualify for races. At one point there was a lot of concern about them being able to keep their sponsors and even keep the doors open. Now, here they are a consistent, winning organization on the NASCAR Sprint Cup series. There’s a lot to be said about Michael Waltrip and his co-owner Rob Kauffman and the team they’ve assembled there.

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