LOUDON, N.H. -- Life couldn't have been much better Saturday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for local favorite Martin Truex Jr., whose No. 1 Chevrolet was fastest in final practice for Sunday's Sprint Cup Lenox Industrial Tools 301.

"The car was a lot better [Saturday], we worked really hard on it [Friday] and made a lot of changes and got a lot better, but we knew we could improve on it," Truex said. "We just kept working on it and it's still not perfect by any means, it's still not where I want it to be but it's a whole lot better and we're gaining on it. It's real fast but a little too tight and if we can get that out of there we can have a great day."

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But as good as Truex's prospects are for Sunday, where he's riding a string of four consecutive top-seven finishes in Cup races at a track where he has three career victories; he's probably triply-excited at the performance his little brother, 17-year-old Ryan Truex, put in over the two previous days.

At a track that's special to the Truex family, since father Martin Truex also won in what's now the Camping World East Series, Ryan Truex won the pole for Friday's Heluva Good 125 and finished second after a fender-banging race to the finish with winner Matt DiBenedetto.

It unofficially put the younger Truex, who has a win and three top-five finishes in six starts as a Michael Waltrip Racing development driver, third in series points, 29 points behind leader Jody Lavender.

And it had his proud older brother, who turns 29 on Monday and who in the Northeast is affectionately known as "Little Martin" in deference to their noted racing father, smiling Saturday afternoon.

"I'm telling you, that's almost how it is -- boom, and here he is, and I'm so proud of him -- I'm like a little kid up on top of the trailer and I get so nervous," Truex said of his brother's appearance on a lot of racing people's radar screens. "He ain't really run nothing that's gotten a lot of attention. He's run in Legends cars and he ran my late model last year that I got for him to get some experience in.

"Everything he gets in, it's like he's been doing it for 10 years. I'm so amazed. I remember the first time I put him in that late model, when I went testing with him. The first lap he was dead sideways off of Turn 4 and his lap time was fast. He just gets it, and I don't know if it's because he's been around it his whole life and he's always watched.

"But he don't say nothing. He's real quiet and I don't know -- I guess he just sits there and takes it all in. I've been real impressed with the job he's done. [Friday] I was real impressed with his patience and his demeanor. He's so smart about his race car for having so little experience as he has. It's pretty amazing."

“

I'm so proud of him -- I'm like a little kid up on top of the trailer and I get so nervous. Everything he gets in, it's like he's been doing it for 10 years. I'm so amazed.

”

-- MARTIN TRUEX JR.

Truex Jr. told of text messages he exchanged with his brother Friday night after his mom, dad and Ryan had left for home, before their father returned to New Hampshire.

"He told me how much he'd wanted to win the race but of course he did -- you're supposed to want to win," Truex Jr. said. "The biggest thing that impresses me so far is how quickly he adapts to different situations. He had never been here before and restarted here where they pinch you down on the bottom and you have to run down there on the flat where they cars don't like to be, at all.

"He was very patient and he let his car come to him. He dropped back to sixth or seventh on one of those restarts, never drove over his head and started picking 'em off one at a time, and the next thing you know he was leading. That's very, very hard to do, especially when you're a young guy and you see that lead slipping away."

Already this season, Ryan Truex has become embroiled in a miniature swirl of controversy. To win the Camping World East race two weeks ago at Watkins Glen, he made contact with leader Patrick Long in the last two corners. After Friday's finish Truex said "we were where we needed to be and it got taken away from us."

"He's seen enough and been around this sport enough to know kind of how it works," Truex Jr. said. "He's a smart kid and he's got a good head on his shoulders. He's got a good demeanor. He's not outspoken, he's kind of quiet -- he just wants to go out there and race and he wants to win and I don't think he's gonna get involved in all the other stuff.

"I know he was mad after the race [Friday] and he really wanted to probably do the wrong thing, but he didn't and that showed a lot of maturity."

The older brother said he was proud of Ryan's recent history and wasn't sure when they'd begin exchanging performance tips.

"The way he ran [Friday], I might need to call him for [Sunday]," Truex Jr. said. "He's really good, but it's really neat to be a part of, really neat to see because I can remember when I was in that position and my dad helped me and I'm just trying to do all I can to help him, trying to help him learn the ropes. He's only 17 so there's a lot for him to learn."

And if garage area rumors about a Waltrip announcement about a new driver are true, what until recently had been an almost incomprehensible dream for the Truex family might come to pass.

"It would be really cool and it's crazy to think it could happen," Truex Jr. said. "We need to get him moved up so we can race together and I can keep an eye on him from the driver's seat.

"A few months before the season started we weren't even sure what we were gonna do. I bought two cars from DEI because they were going to get rid of them and my dad and I were going to run a couple races. And then all of a sudden [MWR] talked to my dad and my dad got that deal going with them and it's just been incredible how fast it's all happened -- right out of the box and they're running up front. It's escalated a lot quicker than I ever thought it would."