Truex sets sights on Junior’s achievement on junior circuit

Wednesday, March 9, 2005 | 8:49 a.m.

Martin Truex Jr. has some bad news for his fellow NASCAR Busch Series competitors.

After winning a series-leading six races and seven poles en route to the 2004 Busch Series championship, Truex and his Chance 2 Motorsports team want to improve their performance this season.

"Obviously, I want to back up our championship," Truex said, "but we want to do better -- win more races and just overall be better as a race team and try to prepare ourselves for the next step."

Although he is fourth in Busch Series points coming into Saturday's Sam's Town 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Truex already is off to a good start of fulfilling his preseason goals. He finished fourth in the season-opening race at Daytona and, after struggling to a 30th-place finish the following week at California Speedway, won the inaugural race in Mexico City last weekend.

Truex was locked in a fierce championship battle with Las Vegas native Kyle Busch for much of the 2004 season before pulling away in the final quarter of the season and eventually locking up the title in the series' penultimate race. Busch has since moved up to the Nextel Cup Series, but Truex said the road to the 2005 title would by no means be a cakewalk.

"We lost one of our competitors, but I think we gained about five," Truex said, evaluating the competition for this season. "I think it's going to be tough with new guys coming in and some of the guys who were running really good at the end of last year who are going to be back.

"I think with this new tire we've got, they really leveled the playing field back out and we've got our work cut out for us, that's for sure. It's not going to be easy (to repeat), but I think we're up to it."

Truex said he had no problem returning to the Busch Series after having such a banner year in the No. 8 Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet, which is co-owned by Teresa Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

"I think it's great," Truex said. "It's going to be a new challenge; it's a new year and there's new people around and everything changes. I know we only had a month or two off, but a lot of things change in those two months. It's going to be really hard and I'm really looking forward to it.'

"I think we're taking the right approach. I think there are still some things I need to learn in this series and probably some things that I missed last year because I had so much going on and things happened so fast."

Although he will have to wait until 2006 to move to the Nextel Cup Series on a full-time basis, Truex will compete in seven Cup races this season in the No. 1 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet. Truex made his first Cup start of the season in the Daytona 500 and was running in the top 10 when his engine expired.

"We're going to run seven Cup races and try to build the No. 1 team back up to be competitive and next year go fulltime with it," he said.

"Doing the seven Cup races we're going to do is going to be a big part of taking the next step and we're looking forward to the challenge."

He is also looking forward to the opportunity of matching Earnhardt Jr.'s mark of winning back-to-back Busch Series championships.

"We were all real proud and real happy that we won it," Truex said, "but we know it's time to get to work and we need to do it again."