Martin Truex Jr.'s crew chief looking past Daytona heartbreak
It's been an eventful week for Martin Truex Jr., crew chief Cole Pearn and the entire No. 78 Furniture Row Racing team.
On Sunday, Truex fell just short of winning the Daytona 500 when his Toyota crossed the finish line a mere .010 seconds behind race winner Denny Hamlin.
Hamlin's margin of victory -- and Truex's margin of defeat -- was the closest in the 58-year history of The Great American Race.
On Wednesday afternoon, NASCAR announced that Pearn has been placed on probation through the end of the calendar year as punishment for a roof-flap violation on Truex's car just prior to Daytona 500 qualifying.
Any way you cut it, it was a crazy week for the single-car team based out of Denver, Colorado. Perhaps surprisingly, or perhaps not, the mood around the shop was actually pretty upbeat despite coming so painfully close to going to Victory Lane in the sport's biggest race.
After packing up and leaving Daytona, the team quickly turned its attention to this weekend's race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
"Honestly, as much work as we had to do to get ready to come here, there wasn't much time to think about it," Pearn told FOXSports.com on Friday in the AMS garage. "It was just cool for everybody to put as much work in as they did over the winter and then go down there and run as good as we did with our backup car. It just shows the level of professionalism that we're operating at. I'm just really proud of everybody and all the work they put in."
By the time he went to bed on Sunday night, Pearn was already pretty much over the disappointment of Daytona.
"You're fine," he said. "You've just got to kind of laugh about it. There's nothing you can do. It was crazy close. You can play the what-ifs and whatever, but it doesn't matter. We still had a great, great day. To run as well as we did all day and come within inches of winning the Daytona 500 is pretty awesome."
So did Pearn think for perhaps a split second that Truex had edged Hamlin in the photo finish?
"I had a bad feeling when we were on the inside lane," he said. "It just seems like there's so many races there where the outside lane gets that last little shot at the line for whatever reason, and I was thinking, 'Man, we're going to have to be a good bit ahead.' As close as we were, even though we were ahead, I just had the feeling we weren't going to do it. So I wasn't too surprised, I guess."
While Wednesday's P2-level penalty against Pearn certainly wasn't good news, it could have been more severe -- a fact not lost on the second-year crew chief.
"I think it's similar to what they've done in those situations before," Pearn said of NASCAR's decision to place him on probation but not levy a fine or deduct points. "You just deal with it and move on."
Was Pearn at all surprised by the punishment?
"No," he said. "I kind of had a feeling that's what it would be."
