• Home
  • Watch Live
  • On-Demand
  • Hosts
    • Andy DeLay
    • Wayne Owens
    • Zachary Mertes
    • Bobby Dale Earnhardt
    • John Dicks
    • Jeremy Taylor
  • Affiliates
  • Advertise
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Burning Rubber Radio Burning Rubber Radio
  • Home
  • Watch Live
  • On-Demand
  • Hosts
    • Andy DeLay
    • Wayne Owens
    • Zachary Mertes
    • Bobby Dale Earnhardt
    • John Dicks
    • Jeremy Taylor
  • Affiliates
  • Advertise
Burning Rubber Radio Burning Rubber Radio
Home » Latest News » Truex thinks 2022 NASCAR Cup season will “change very rapidly”
NASCAR

Truex thinks 2022 NASCAR Cup season will “change very rapidly”

Staff ReportBy Staff ReportFebruary 2, 2022No Comments3 Mins Read
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

Listen to this article

With the introduction of the Next Gen car and the relative short time teams have had to test and work on them, drivers may need longer than usual to determine where they stack up with their competition.

“I think it’s going to take a while. Typically, we go through the West Coast swing and Atlanta and Daytona and you kind of have some kind of an idea of where you are or get kind of a good feel on how things are going to be,” said veteran driver Martin Truex Jr.

“I think this year is going to be way different – I think it’s going to take a while longer. We’ve never had anything change as much as we have with the car this year.”

Read Also:

In addition to a car with what many term “revolutionary” changes, especially when it comes to NASCAR racing, the start of the 2022 schedule will leave it difficult for teams to gauge how the remainder of the season may go.

The “unofficial” start kicks off on Sunday with the non-points Busch Light Clash exhibition race on a made-from-scratch ¼-mile oval inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

An official NASCAR race hasn’t been held on that small a track since the early 1970s and whatever takes place on Sunday will have little to nothing to do with how the remainder of the 2022 season plays out.

After the Clash is the Daytona 500, but that race is held on a superspeedway which has different aerodynamic rules than the vast majority of tracks on the schedule.

Daytona is followed by Auto Club Speedway in California – a 2-mile oval which is also much unlike most tracks on the schedule. The March 6 race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway – a 1.5-mile track – may provide the first indication of how teams may stack up in the long term.

Learning as we go

Even then, Truex says, teams will still have little on-track experience and each track may end up bringing its own unique challenges.

“It’s going to take us quite a while to figure out where we are at, to learn about this car, to understand how to make it work on different types of race tracks and I think that’s going to go on for a while,” he said.

“Things are going to change very rapidly through the first half of the year. It’s going to take a while to really feel comfortable where you are or understand things to the extent we have in the past.”

Truex and his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team are coming off a runner-up finish in the 2021 championship race – his third finish of second or better in the series standings in the past five years, including his 2017 title campaign.

While Truex said he generally enters each season with a lot of anticipation, he admitted this year there are “more question marks than ever.”

“We’ve been in situations like this where a lot of things are changing, and you don’t really know. You just try to prepare the best you can,” he said. “I, obviously, have a great team and a lot of good people around me, and I try to take advantage of those people the best that I can and that usually works out.

“I look forward to it and just being open-minded and take them as they come.”

shares

comments

Related Posts

NASCAR 2023 Sonoma schedule, entry list, and how to watch

June 9, 2023

NASCAR unveils imminent safety upgrades to Next Gen car

June 8, 2023

Noah Gragson out with concussion after Gateway crash

June 8, 2023

Comments are closed.

NASCAR 2023 Sonoma schedule, entry list, and how to watch

June 9, 2023

NASCAR unveils imminent safety upgrades to Next Gen car

June 8, 2023

Gragson out with concussion-like symptoms after Gateway crash

June 8, 2023

Noah Gragson out with concussion after Gateway crash

June 8, 2023

Christian Rose to make NASCAR Truck debut at Richmond

June 8, 2023
© 2008-2022 Burning Rubber Radio

Burning Rubber Radio Is a Production Of The Performance Motorsports Network & WhytLightnin Radio

Partner Sites
  • NASCAR.com
  • iRacing

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.