‘Lollygag’ to Homestead? Stage master Truex hopes to pour it on

RELATED: Practice recaps | Full schedule for Daytona DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Dressed in casual shirts and a can of sunscreen in his back pocket, Martin Truex Jr. raced miniature speed boats Friday morning with professional fisherman Kevin Van Dam on Daytona International Speedway's Lake Lloyd. What Van Dam didn't know was Truex actually builds his own similar boats and has won a national championship racing them twice a year. "It's a big hobby of mine," Truex said. And the Furniture Row Racing driver's day job is going similarly well. A two-time winner already this season, Truex trails Kyle Larson in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship standings by a mere 13 points. As importantly, Truex holds a H-E-F-T-Y advantage looking at the playoff picture. He leads Jimmie Johnson 21-16 in playoff points and, most impressively, Truex has more than double the stage wins as the next closest competitor -- 11-4 over Kyle Busch. On Thursday, Busch's older brother, Kurt, suggested that Truex could essentially take it easy all the way to the championship round of NASCAR's year-end playoffs at this point. "A guy like (Martin) Truex, he can almost lollygag all the way to Homestead with as many playoff points as he's accumulated," Busch said. Asked about that Friday morning, Truex paused, then delivered a very direct opinion -- one that shouldn't be too surprising considering his effort this season. "That's fine, they can say that, but I don't think we're going to do that," Truex said. "Again, if we sit idle and don't get any more stage wins and let the points lead slip away, we'll be at a disadvantage come playoff time. So we want to continue to build on that and we want to lead the regular-season points at the end of the regular season. "That's going to be difficult, but it's one of our goals; a focus of ours. And then each week, we want stage wins and trying to get the overall race win. The bigger lead we can have at the start of the playoffs, the better our chances. So we're not going to stop pushing." Truex led the championship standings after a win at Dover International Speedway during the playoff push last year, only to have engine trouble completely derail his title hopes three weeks later at Talladega. It still stings. And motivates. That's why Truex is determined to keep collecting any point available and the effort appears to be paying off. At the start of every playoff round, the points amassed in the regular season are added to their postseason total and carry over to each round. And Truex is making the most of it. "I think for us, it wasn't a strategy we're doing that no one else has caught on to, or we're doing anything special," Truex said. "It's being up front, leading the most laps. It's being in position to win races and being fast every week. "It's just been a good year. Last year we led a ton of laps and won a bunch of races and never got anything for it with some bad races along the way, and some back luck here and there. "I think that's what's cool about the stage format. For us, running good throughout the race is helping. Even if you have a bad finish like we did last week (37th at Sonoma Raceway) there's still something to be said for being fast all day, running up front and leading those laps. "It's been really cool for us and helped us a ton this year. Hopefully, we can continue to take advantage of it." [gallery_content baseUrl="https://www.nascar.com" galleryID="1264"]