Michael Waltrip Racing

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Photo Credit: Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images for NASCAR

By: Toby Christie – Follow on Twitter @Tobalical

Martin Truex Jr. has absolutely been on fire so far in 2012, as has been the case with the whole Michael Waltrip Racing team. Those trends continued Friday during Coors Light Pole qualifying for Saturday night’s Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Truex posted a lap of 190.369 mph, which was just enough to edge out Roush-Fenway teammates Matt Kenseth and Greg Biffle for the pole. This marks the seventh pole of Truex’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career, and it’s his second pole at Texas Motor Speedway.

Matt Kenseth was just saddened by being so close to the pole.

“That was good. I just would feel better if I got beat by more I guess. I felt like I got it all out of there and we just missed it a little bit. Our car has a lot of speed we just don’t have it driving exactly right yet. I had a couple different issues. A little bit of everything. It was a little too loose, but I had some other problems too.”

Continue reading “MARTIN TRUEX JR. CONTINUES HOT STREAK, WILL START SAMSUNG MOBILE 500 FROM THE POLE”

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Michael Waltrip Racing still has three drivers in the top 10 in owner points and two in the top nine in the driver standings. Martin Truex Jr. is one of four drivers with four top-10 finishes, along with Biffle, Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson.

Truex’s surge shouldn’t surprise many. The New Jersey native finished the 2011 season with five top 10s in the last six races.

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Brian Vickers returns to Michael Waltrip Racing’s No. 55 Toyota at Martinsville Speedway buoyed by his top-five finish at Bristol Motor Speedway in the combination’s debut.

Five races into the 2012 season, MWR’s plan is working. The combination of Vickers and Mark Martin has put the team into the top 10 in NASCAR Sprint Cup owner championship points along with the No. 56 of Martin Truex Jr. and No. 15 of Clint Bowyer.

Vickers has work to do at Martinsville, where a sixth-place finish in 2010 is his best of two top-10 finishes in 13 starts. He has yet to lead a lap around the 0.526-mile “paperclip” layout and has finished on the lead lap six times.

Bowyer led 91 laps of last year’s Martinsville spring race and finished ninth. In the fall race, well, his luck wasn’t as pronounced. Vickers’ No. 83 Toyota was listed in five of the 18 caution periods.

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Three words describe how qualifying for this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup™ has become incrementally more difficult in 2012: Michael Waltrip Racing. The team, which has yet to send a driver to the Chase, but counts its two full-time members Martin Truex Jr. and Clint Bowyer among the top 10 in points after the season’s first four races.

That follows an unprecedented finish of three drivers – Truex, Bowyer and first-time organization starter Brian Vickers – among the top five in Bristol. All three of MWR’s cars (one is shared by Mark Martin and Vickers) are top 10 in NSCS Owner Championship standings.

Martin has the best record at Auto Club Speedway: a win in 1998 among six top-five finishes. Bowyer, eighth in points, finished second in 2010. Truex, hoping to erase a 171-race winless streak dating to the 2007 fall race at Dover International Speedway, posted back-to-back sixth-place finish at ACS in 2007-08. Truex ranks a heady fourth in points, 18 behind leader Biffle.