Martin Truex Jr. can’t be too thrilled about the start to his 2020 NASCAR season. The reason being, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver is off to his worst start to a year since 2014. Through the first six races of each season since then, he’s only averaged a sub 10th place finish just three times (2014, 2016, 2020) including this one. In his championship winning season of 2017, he came out of the gates with an 8.8 average finish. His best years though were 2015 and 2018 (6.1 average finishes in each).

This year, he’s yet to earn a top five finish in six tries. In his last 12 races, dating back to last year, he’s only had two top fives in total. If you go back to the Bristol Night Race last year (20 races ago) even, Truex has only scored five top five results.

The good problem of this is, it’s not like his car has been slow. The problem lies in, they just can’t put a full race together. Maybe this is the weekend that they can.

“We’re right there,” Truex said on Friday. “We’re not one of the top cars out there yet but were close.”

Daytona has never been a good track for him as he finished 32nd in the season opening ‘500. A week later, his car was having troubles in inspection. Then, they were finally able to clear it and looked fast in Las Vegas, but problems on pit road plagued them. They’d finish 20th. Same thing for Fontana. He was in the hunt for the win for a second straight week before more problems on pit road. He finished 14th. Phoenix saw a top 10 go away in a crash with Aric Almirola in the final stage. He came home 32nd that day. Then over the last two races at Darlington, he had damage from the Lap 1 incident last Sunday and had to work on his car throughout the day to get a seasons best sixth place finish. On Wednesday night, his car was solid in a 10th place run.

Now, can he run a whole race without makes from an on track incident or on pit road? The Charlotte Motor Speedway would be the place he can overcome it.

Truex, has won two of the last three races on the 1.5-mile oval. In fact, over his last eight Charlotte oval starts, he’s finished i the top five in seven of them including three wins, a runner-up and two third place efforts. He led 392 of 400 laps in his Coca-Cola 600 victory in 2016. He led 116 more in his win last year. He led 233 laps in a third place effort in the 2017 Coke 600. His last four World 600 finishes have been first, third, second and first respectively.

Truex admits though, the speed this year is a bit different than last year. They have it but not like they have had in years past.

Will that be a hindrance on Sunday? Maybe. But he knows his way around this track and is confident in new crew chief James Small’s ability to have his car ready to go.