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BACK-TO-BACK TITLES HAS TRUEX THINKING BIG

Winning a professional motor racing championship at any level is difficult.

All championship-winning drivers will always talk about how many different factors – such as preparation, skill and outright luck – needed to go their way in order for them to take the title. In the case of 18-year-old Ryan Truex in the 2010 NASCAR K&N Pro East Series, he needed all of those factors to fall into place for a second consecutive season if he was to repeat his 2009 championship.

Fortunately for Truex – the younger brother of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racer Martin Truex Jr. (pictured alongside Ryan with the 2010 East Series championship trophy) and the son of long-time Busch North racer Martin Truex – those factors did fall into place for a second time, and the driver of the No. 00 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota Camry celebrated back-to-back championships following a third-place performance last weekend at Dover.

With that settled, the young Truex is hoping that back-to-back East Series titles will benefit him as he looks to take the next step in his career.

“Hopefully, it gets me some sponsors for next year so I can go racing again,” Truex says. “Right now, we’re trying to work on our Nationwide deal for next year with MWR. We’re working on a schedule right now and just trying to see how everything falls into place.”

It’s already starting to fall into place, as Ryan will share the No. 99 OUT! Pet Care Toyota Camry for Diamond-Waltrip Racing with his brother for the remainder of the 2010 NASCAR Nationwide Series season, beginning with this weekend’s race at Kansas Speedway. Ryan will also drive the car at Charlotte, Gateway, Phoenix and Homestead, adding to the three Nationwide starts he made earlier this summer.

He will also realize another dream this weekend, as he will get his first opportunity to race against his brother, who will pilot the No. 00 Diamond-Waltrip Racing Camry. He’s hoping this opportunity sets the stage for a full-season program in 2011.

“Our goal is to be able to run full-time, but pretty much right now, we’re working on anything we can get,” he says. “I’m really excited to go in there next year and learn a lot more.”

Back-to-back East Series championships can only help him in his quest. More is pretty much always better, right?

“When you come back and do it again, it really proves that it wasn’t a fluke,” says Truex. “You’ve just got the right stuff going on. I definitely have a great team and a great group of guys. They just worked really hard all year giving me great cars and stuff, and that’s what it takes to win championships.”

Truex scored a pair of victories in the 10-race season, both of which came at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on the undercard for Sprint Cup races in June and earlier this month. Those were important victories to Truex for a couple of reasons.

“It’s a big place for a lot of Northeast drivers and there’s a lot of guys from the Northeast that race in the series,” says Truex, who hails from Mayetta, N.J. “It’s kind of been like the Daytona 500 of our series for a number of years. Part of it’s because it’s one of the biggest tracks we run and its history with the Busch North (which was a precursor to the East Series), and then we’re running in front of the Cup guys. I feel like that’s one of the hardest races to win, so to go out there and win it twice really says a lot about our cars.”

And while the New Hampshire victories might have been prestigious, Truex wasn’t the only driver to win two races this season in the East Series. Both of Joe Gibbs Racing’s drivers, Max Gresham and Brett Moffitt, earned a pair of victories, as did Darrell Wallace Jr. Truex’s title, which he clinched as soon as he started the season finale at Dover, came by virtue of the fact that he finished inside the top 10 in all but one of the season’s 10 races.

“Consistency definitely helps, but every race we went in, we just went in trying to go for wins,” Truex says. “We never really points raced. We just went in and tried to win every race. When you do that, usually the points will come to you.”

The points certainly did come to Truex, but they were hard to come by in a talented field. Whereas the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series feature regular appearances from Sprint Cup Series drivers and have become a destination of sorts for many drivers, the East Series is definitely a key steppingstone for future NASCAR stars. The only real celebrity driver in the East Series this season was when stock-car racing neophyte Danica Patrick competed in the Dover finale in an effort to get more seat time.

Drivers like Martin Truex Jr. and Joey Logano honed their skills in the East Series before jumping into the higher ranks of NASCAR. Several Sprint Cup Series teams, including Joe Gibbs Racing, Team Red Bull and Truex’s team, Michael Waltrip Racing, have identified the East Series as the series in which to develop talent, and the series visited tough one-mile ovals such as New Hampshire and Dover, short tracks like Martinsville and Iowa Speedway, and the road course at Lime Rock Park in 2010.

“I think it’s the best place to learn because you go to such a variety of tracks,” Truex says. “The cars are pretty similar to Nationwide cars. The level of competition has been really high this year. There have been about 10-12 cars every weekend that can win the race. When you have that, it’s a pretty good place to learn, trying to race all those guys for the win.

“You go to places like Dover, New Hampshire and things like that. Take Danica Patrick. I’m sure she learned a lot out here racing with us, because I think we’re a little crazier than the Nationwide guys. I think it’s good for that. We’re all young kids trying to make it so we’ve all got a lot to prove. We all race hard against each other every weekend.”

It’s been said that drivers who return to developmental series for another season after winning the championship had better do it again or risk damaging their future career. Truex didn’t see it that way. Scoring a repeat East Series title was important to him for another reason.

“The biggest thing is just pride,” he says. “Just going out and proving to yourself that you can do it again. All my guys wanted to go out and prove that they deserve to be here. We went out and just did it again. They’ve been giving me great stuff and they’ve worked really, really hard for this.”

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