Truex on pole for NASCAR Cup race
Martin Truex Jr. won a pole for the first time in his three-plus seasons with Joe Gibbs Racing and will lead a Toyota-heavy top five to green at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.
Truex turned a lap of 127.113 mph on Saturday and won his 20th career pole — the previous 19 were won with other teams, including a careerbest five with defunct Furniture Row Racing in 2016. He has 12 wins with JGR since 2019.
“We’ve got a lot of race wins, and those are obviously more important,” Truex said. “You always want to be the fastest guy. We got a small victory today.”
Truex, the 2017 Cup champion, will take any boost he can as he races Sunday for his first win of the season. Truex has 31 career Cup victories and won four times last season and was runner-up in the standings to champion Kyle Larson. But he’s scuffled this season in NASCAR’s new Next Gen stock car over the first 19 starts and posted only two top-five finishes. He hasn’t finished better than 11th in any of his last four races.
Truex is winless in 28 career starts at New Hampshire. With a win, he would earn a spot in NASCAR’s playoffs.
“We’ve been trying really hard to get the first Cup win here,” he said. “We’ve certainly been good enough to win here.”
Truex led a Toyota run that took four of the topfive spots. 23XI Racing took the third and fourth spots with Kurt Busch in the No. 45 and Bubba Wallace in the No. 23, respectively. Truex’s JGR teammate Christopher Bell starts fifth.
Chase Elliott starts second in the No. 9 Chevrolet. He won last week’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Truex, who advanced to NASCAR’s title-deciding championship race in four of the past five seasons, and JGR announced in June the driver would return next season in the No. 19 Toyota.
INDYCAR
Colton Herta posted a fast lap of 59.2698 seconds in Saturday’s qualifying at Toronto, becoming IndyCar’s first two-time pole winner this season.
The Californian will start from the No. 1 spot for the ninth time in his career and first since competing in Long Beach, California, in April.
A different driver captured the top starting spot in each of the series’ first nine races and rookie
David Malukas had a chance to make it 10 straight. Instead, he will start a career best fifth.
Herta barely edged out six-time series champ
Scott Dixon, whose best time on the bumpy, 11turn, 1.786-mile course came on his last lap of the day. Dixon was clocked at 59.3592. Two-time series winner Josef Newgarden will start third after going 59.5257 despite tapping the wall in the sixth turn before parking the No. 2 Chevrolet for Team Penske.
Points leader Marcus Ericsson will start ninth in IndyCar’s first race at Toronto since 2019.
If Dixon wins Sunday’s race, he will tie Mario Andretti (52) for the second-most career wins in IndyCar history. A.J. Foyt holds the record with 67.