Martin Truex, Jr. Blasts to Pole in Final Martinsville Cup Start
Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Martinsville Speedway could be the final outing at the historic half-mile paperclip for Martin Truex, Jr. So, it’s fitting that the Joe Gibbs Racing driver will lead the field to green.
Truex, behind the wheel of the No. 19 Auto-Owners Insurance Toyota Camry XSE, laid down the quickest lap time in the final round of single-vehicle qualifying on Saturday, posting a time of 19.686 seconds (96.190mph).
It’s the third pole position for the Mayetta, New Jersey-native at Martinsville Speedway, and the 24th of his NASCAR Cup Series career. The driver of the No. 19 also captured the pole position at the racetrack last Fall, leading 47 laps and finishing outside the top 10, in 12th.
The 500-lap contest doesn’t have immense significance for the soon-to-be-retired Truex, seeing as he was eliminated from the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs after the first three-race round, but is one of his final chances to secure a victory in his final full-time campaign.
STARTING LINEUP: 2024 XFINITY 500 at Martinsville
“Yeah, that was [what I meant by wanting to have fun],” Truex said after his qualifying lap. “I felt great about our car on stickers. You never want to get too optimistic, but it fired off great in practice especially that second run with the track rubbered in and I was like ‘Alright, if we can just hit the balance here for qualifying, this should be really fast’.”
“You know, we haven’t had a lot of good going for us lately. This feels awesome, and any time you’re first in anything in this series its special and it’s exciting, and just thanks to Auto-Owners and Bass Pro, and everyone who supports us. We’ve got some work to do for tomorrow, but hopefully we can gain on it and have a good day.”
NASCAR Cup Series post-season driver Chase Elliott enters Martinsville in a must-win scenario, similar to the one he faced when he captured his sole championship in 2020 and will start from the outside of the front row for Sunday’s XFINITY 500.
William Byron enters Martinsville on the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs cutline, with a seven-point advantage over teammate Kyle Larson, and will start from third place after a solid qualifying effort in his No. 24 Liberty University Chevrolet. Byron is a two-time winner of the Martinsville Spring event.
In the team’s second-to-last outing, Chase Briscoe managed to record a fourth place starting spot for Stewart-Haas Racing. Ty Gibbs, another driver who has been eliminated from the post-season, rounded out the top five, qualifying fifth.
Harrison Burton, wrapping up his three-season tenure with Wood Brothers Racing, posted a sixth place qualifying effort, matching the 2022 finale at Phoenix as his best non-superspeedway start in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Alex Bowman and Ryan Preece will share the fourth row on the starting grid for Sunday’s penultimate event of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series campaign, with Kyle Larson, the first driver below the cutline, starting ninth. Richmond winner Austin Dillon rounded out the top 10 in qualifying.
Of the eight drivers still in the championship fight, five failed to post a time quick enough to advance to the second round of qualifying.
Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney will start from 14th and 15th, respectively. Logano is already locked into the Championship 4, while the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion finds himself in a must-win situation.
Christopher Bell didn’t have the same qualifying pace as his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Martin Truex, Jr., and will start from 16th. Tyler Reddick, a fellow Toyota-supported driver, will start from a dismal 28th-place, after a horrendous lap in Saturday’s qualifying session.
The driver in the direst position, however, is Denny Hamlin. The driver of the No. 11 Toyota Camry XSE will start shotgun on the field in Sunday’s event, after crashing – significantly – in the middle of an extended practice session on Saturday.
Hamlin was at the top of the speed charts at the time of the incident, when rubber buildup got caught in the throttle body, forcing the throttle to hang on the No. 11, sending him straight for the Turn 3 wall. Luckily, the Chesterfield, Virginia native was able to get the car spun to impact the rear-end, allowing the car to be salvageable for the event on Sunday.
The XFINITY 500 at Martinsville Speedway will take place on Sunday, November 3. Coverage of the event will be on NBC at 2:00 PM ET. Radio broadcasts can be heard on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90).
