Truex clawing back with career-best on road course

The Chase be darned. Martin Truex Jr. is here to race.

And that's why the star of the young man from the Jersey shore was among the brightest on pit road at Watkins Glen International on Sunday evening; and why Truex planned to be at a test session at Kentucky Speedway the very next day.

Truex had just notched a career-best finish on a road course, fifth in the Centurion Boats at The Glen. Never mind that he picked up two positions in the Sprint Cup standings, moving him into 15th.

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We're not looking at points, we're just going out there and racing hard and we'll see where we end up when the racing's over with.
”
MARTIN TRUEX JR.At that rate, Truex will only gain 156 points by the Chase cutoff event in September at Richmond International Raceway -- not enough to get him into his second consecutive Chase in the No. 1 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet.

While that's a great disappointment to Truex and his team, Sunday's run at The Glen was the latest step in their rebound from a horrendous six-race stretch in the spring that knocked them from eighth in the standings, back to 17th.

Only recently have they shown signs of recovering, and that rebound has a few notable aspects. Three races ago, crew chief "Bono" Manion and car chief Gary Putnam began serving six-race suspensions for a technical violation at Daytona.

Truex only recently re-signed a one-year contract extension with DEI (read more) and before The Glen he credited his team, including interim crew chief Mike Greci -- his former crew chief on Truex's family run Busch East team -- for stepping up.

"That's probably the biggest reason I'm here, because I've got that communication with [Truex] for all these years, now," Greci said. "Obviously, we miss Gary and Bono a whole bunch, but the last three races we've been getting better and better and we'll go to Michigan in good shape, I think."

For his part, Truex was still enjoying Watkins Glen.

"Man, it was smooth -- the first time in a real long time that we've had a really smooth race in a while, so hopefully that monkey's off our back," Truex said. "We're not looking at points, we're just going out there and racing hard and we'll see where we end up when the racing's over with."