Truex: 2016 Coke 600 win "at the top of anything we’ve ever done"

Last season, the duo earned their first win of the 2016 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season in dominant, record-breaking fashion at the Memorial Day classic at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team already owns a win this season and is all-but locked into this season’s playoffs, but all signs point toward Truex again being a force to contend with in NASCAR’s longest race.

It's up there at the top of anything we’ve ever done, anything I’ve ever been a part of.

Martin Truex Jr. on 2016 Coca-Cola 600 domination 

In a relatively short amount of time as a crew chief in NASCAR’s premier series, Cole Pearn has helped jumpstart the career of Truex and together the two have already earned two chances at winning a series championship.

Just a few months into the 2017 season, they appear well on their way to a third.

Truex, a two-time champion in what is now the Xfinity Series, had been a fairly consistent performer in the Cup series but owned just two series victories in his first eight seasons.

Working with Pearn

After a difficult 2014 season, FRR promoted Pearn from lead race engineer to Truex’s crew chief for the 2015 season and almost from the beginning, the combination clicked.

“Cole’s really good. He’s really smart. But more importantly, I think he's really, really, good at putting the right people in the right places,” Truex said. “That’s something I noticed when he first started.

“Our engineers and him have past history. They really get along well. They’re complete opposites, but they know how to work together. If one of them has an area that they're not an expert in, the other guy is.

“So, they really complement each other well, and they complement me well personality-wise, background-wise. We’re similar ages, we came up similar ways.”

Truex’s performance improved greatly, almost right away, with Pearn at the helm. The pair visited Victory Lane at Pocono Raceway in June and Truex ended the season with eight top-five and 22 top-10 finishes – both career-bests at the time.

Truex advanced through the playoffs and into the championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where he finished 12th in the race and a career-best fourth in the series standings.

The rough 2014 season may have left Truex with doubts about his career path, but the 2015 erased them all.

“Once Cole came in and we fixed the race cars, it was like, he flipped a switch and here we go,” Truex said. “I've never really thought about it not working out, honestly, basically just because I had no opportunity to. It was, ‘This is where you're going, now figure out how to make it work.’

“We’ve been able to do that.”

The strong 2015 season raised high expectations for 2016 and once again, Pearn and Truex found a way to raise the performance bar.

Early in the season, Truex had runs in two races – Texas and Kansas – where he led the majority of laps in the race, but couldn’t close the day with a victory.

Unprecedented domination 

That changed in dramatic fashion in May’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.

Truex, who started from the pole, led 392 of the 400 laps – the most-ever in the event’s history – on his way to his first victory of the 2016 season. Jim Paschal set the previous record of 335 laps led in 1967.

In addition, Truex led 588 miles in the 600-mile race, setting the record for the most miles led in a race in NASCAR history.

“It was a pretty unbelievable accomplishment when I look back on it,” Pearn said. “It was kind of the perfect night. We did everything right. To have a race go that smoothly and have a car that dominant, you can’t really draw that up.”

The performance is even more impressive considering how close the competition is in the Cup series.

“With it being such a long race, and with the track changing as much as it does, to stay up front virtually the whole time – that just doesn’t happen,” Pearn said. “In this day and age, it’s just a very cool accomplishment."

Looking back

Truex considers his Coca-Cola 600 victory as perhaps his biggest accomplishment in his Cup career so far.

“Thinking back on what we did that night, that whole weekend really, still it's amazing to think that we did something no one's ever done,” he said. “As long as this sport has been around, to lead more laps, more miles in a race that anyone ever has, is crazy, especially in today's day and age, the competition being so close, the cars being so similar.

“It's up there at the top of anything we’ve ever done, anything I’ve ever been a part of. It’s definitely cool to look at. I’ve watched the replay I think twice now, once right after, and sometime it was on again and I caught it.

“It’s still pretty amazing to see just how that race played out.”

Watch this interview with Truex about that win below. Click on the picture to watch: