The Year Of Wire-To-Wire NASCAR Wins At New Hampshire

Martin Truex Jr. led the most laps in Sunday’s (July 17) Ambetter 301, crossing the finish line first 172 times in 301 laps. If you like math, that’s just over 57% of the race.

If you don’t like math, he led a lot of laps, and he didn’t win.

Truex has led a lot of laps in the NASCAR Cup Series at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, but Sunday’s effort marks the most he’s ever led in a single race. It does not, however, represent the highest percentage of a race Truex has led at Loudon.

That’s because he once wired the field.

For the math-lovers, that’s 100% of laps led.

For the why-the-heck-are-you-throwing-math-at-me crowd (who are my kind of people, frankly), Truex led the first lap, he led the last lap, and he led every other lap in between.

And he’s not the only driver to boast that feat at New Hampshire — in the same season.

But we’ll talk about Truex first because we’re already talking about Truex and let’s just go with that.

In July 2000, Truex, who had just turned 20 years old a few days prior, was in the midst of his rookie season in what’s now ARCA Menards Series East (which was then a much deeper, more competitive series with a 19-race schedule).

In the first eight races of the year, Truex posted a third place at Seekonk and had four finishes of 32rd or worse (yes, the series had that many cars then).

Then the series moved to New Hampshire for the second time that year. Loudon was one of a couple of tracks where the series ran in conjunction with the NASCAR national series, so it was always a big one for the teams. In 2000, the Xfinity Series race was a standalone in May, so the East Series ran with them as well. Truex had finished 29th in that effort.

Truex’s team was owned by his father, Martin, who had had success as a racer himself. Sponsored by SeaWatch, his family’s company, Truex was the epitome of the family team driver. Most of the series was driver or family-owned teams at the time.

It was a safe bet that more of the fans in attendance knew who Martin Truex Sr. was than his namesake. But that would change soon enough.

Martin Jr. won the first pole of his fledgling career, and when he strapped in for the 100-lap race, he was determined to make the most of it.

He did.

Truex never relinquished the lead, taking the 44-car field to task. Incidentally, another nine cars failed to qualify. The field was healthy and had plenty of talent. Two-time defending champion Brad Leighton finished in the top 10, as did…