NASCAR Cup Series: Will Martin Truex Jr. repeat as champion in 2018?
By Asher Fair
After a dominant 2017 season, can Martin Truex Jr. win the NASCAR Cup Series championship for the second year in a row in 2018?
Martin Truex Jr. came into the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series season, his 12th season as a full-time driver in the sport, having finished in the top 10 in the championship standings just once in his career.
That statistic would not be the only statistic to change for the 37-year-old in a huge way in the 2017 season.
Not long ago, Truex Jr. really couldn’t do much more than race around toward the middle or even the back of the pack. Coming into the 2017 season, he had had some recent success, but it came after a six-year span from 2007 to 2013 during which he did not win a single race. How good was he really?
Despite winning just one race, the third race of his career in his 10th career full-time season, in the 2015 Cup Series season, Truex Jr. finished in the top 10 in the championship standings for the first time in his career, and he did so in 4th place after qualifying for the Championship 4. Ever since then, it’s been tough to stop him.
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While he only finished in 11th place in the championship standings in the 2016 season, he did so after winning a career-high four races, which more than doubled his career win total, bringing it from three to seven. He was the driver to beat for much of the season before issues in the playoffs derailed his hopes for a first career championship.
In the 2017 season, Truex Jr. continued to be the driver to beat, and he took that role to a whole new level. For the second consecutive season, he more than doubled his career win total, taking it from seven to 15 with a career-high eight victories. He would not be denied a spot in the Championship 4, and he would not be denied his first career NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Now for the big question: can Martin Truex Jr. repeat as NASCAR Cup Series champion in the 2018 season?
After his dominant performance in 2017 and the fact that he is gotten better and better as of late, particularly over the last three seasons, the easy answer would be “yes”. He certainly can repeat as champion. But will he? That may or may not be another story.
Furniture Row Racing, the team for which Truex Jr. drives, is a Toyota-powered team. Toyota had the upper hand for much of the 2017 season, winning 14 of the last 19 races and 16 races overall. Neither of the other two manufactures, Chevrolet and Ford, had more than 10 victories; in fact, they both had exactly 10 wins.
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Martin Truex Jr. was the clear top Toyota driver in the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series season. Will he continue as the top Toyota driver in the 2018 season, and will Toyota be able to keep their advantage over Chevrolet and Ford, especially with the new Chevrolet Camaro coming out? The answers to these questions will undoubtedly determine whether or not Truex Jr. enters the 2019 season as the two-time reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion.