Partnership with RCR paying off for Martin Truex Jr.

LAS VEGAS — Martin Truex Jr. can be forgiven for floating a few inches off the ground these days.

Three races into the Sprint Cup season, Truex is flying high. He finished a strong second in Sunday's Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, confirming that his runs of eighth at Daytona International Speedway and sixth at Atlanta Motor Speedway were not flukes.

"The biggest thing I was proud of today was we were off a little bit at the beginning of the race and worked on it all day long, continued to get better," Truex said. "At the end of the day, we were the best we'd been all day."

Truex is fourth in Sprint Cup points going into next weekend's race at Phoenix International Raceway.

Truex said the Furniture Row Racing team's link with Richard Childress Racing is paying big dividends, in part because his new crew chief, Cole Pearn, is sold on the partnership. Last year, Truex said, his team was "fundamentally screwed up."

"Cole and our engineers have really bought into their engineering program, really bought into the way they're building their cars and really trying to stay on the same page and not say, 'We're going to go down this road and do our own thing. We're going to use some of what we can get from you and use some of our own stuff.'

"We're just getting more experienced together, getting more confidence in each other and really just had a better game plan going into the season. It's a big part of the reason why the cars are running better and all the teams seem to be running closer together."

Pearn, formerly an engineer at RCR, said the team's strong start is the result of targeted work in the off-season.

"We really worked hard over the off-season to put all this in place," Pearn said. "We had the brand new car (new rules package) to work with, and that helped. And we've had the good relationship with RCR.

"I used to work over there (at RCR) and still think of all those guys as family. We have small differences between what we do and what they do, but overall it's a good team effort.

"Second still sucks, but it was a good run today."

The big start by Truex has paralleled good news from his long-time girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, who is seeing success in her battle against ovarian cancer.

"When you get a glimpse of something that could possibly change your life like that in a bad way, it makes you look at things a lot differently," Truex said. "Suddenly, those bad days at the racetrack weren't so bad. Suddenly, they were OK, and I knew that if we just kept working hard we could get through it all, and certainly I feel like we have now.

"But we're going to continue to work hard and try to get to that next level. We want to win races. We have a great team. We have good equipment right now, and it's important when you're in those positions to try to take advantage of that."

PHOTOS: Behind the wheel with Martin Truex Jr.