Martin Truex Jr. is gracious underdog in Chase for the Sprint Cup skirmish

Perspective is often a word that gets left behind in the bustle of everyday life, especially in the zoom-zoom world of stock-car racing.

It’s always about focus and finding speed and finishing first.

Martin Truex Jr. still does all of that. He is one race away from joining an elite group of four drivers competing for a NASCAR Sprint Cup season title in Homestead-Miami. But he has also found a way to slow down and count every precious second.

His longtime girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, isn’t an athlete, but she is a fighter. Stage III ovarian cancer is her opponent. Doctors removed her appendix, spleen, ovaries, Fallopian tubes and part of her stomach in August 2014. She is still receiving a monthly dose of chemo in an effort to ward off a recurrence.

It brings Truex back to the word perspective.

“I know right now it’s not the end of the world if something bad happens at the race track,” Truex said outside his hauler at Phoenix International Raceway. “There are more important things in life, and it’s helped me put things in perspective.

“It’s taken a lot of the pressure off. This Chase really should be stressful and it should be wearing you out, but it hasn’t. I’ve really enjoyed it.”

The math is always convoluted in NASCAR, but as he preps to start fifth in the Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 Sunday afternoon, Truex holds the fourth and final position to qualify for a championship run in Homestead next weekend. He is just four points behind Kyle Busch, the second-place driver, but a precarious seven points ahead of Carl Edwards, the fifth-place driver in the Chase grid.

And everything changes if one of the drivers behind Truex wins on Sunday and qualifies automatically.

But it all goes back to pressure and perspective. Some would say Truex is playing with house money anyway. He’s battled odds personally and professionally as a one-man wrecking crew for Furniture Row Racing.

Up against the superpowers like Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, Truex and his crew chief Cole Pearn have persevered as a single-driver team. The race shop is in Denver. Truex lives in Mooresville, N.C. There are a lot phone calls and texts during the week.

It’s not as if they race with hand-me-downs. A technical agreement with Richard Childress Racing has helped level the playing field and keep them competitive. Still …

“We have a lot less people. We have a lot less resources. We spend a lot less money. We don’t have a huge aero department,” Truex said. “Cole has a lot of different titles. He has a lot of different things that his hands are on.”

It’s worked obviously.

And here’s the better deal:

Truex won’t lose on Sunday. After finishing 24th in points last season, he’s had a great run in 2015. He certainly won’t be happy if he gets squeezed out of the championship picture, but he gets to go home to a woman he loves, a woman who fights for her life every day, a woman who cherishes life, even though the surgery has denied the couple their dream of having children.

Truex has not missed a race last year or this year because of Sherry’s health issues. He only missed qualifying at Michigan last year to be with her for that extensive surgery, even though team owner Barney Visser had said it was OK to stay home.

“I’m just happy to be alive & to be here to make memories w/my loved ones,” Pollex tweeted after her surgery. “Life is so precious. Love one another & live life to the fullest.”

The fight continues for Martin Truex Jr. — inside the car and once he leaves the track.

“You really understand how things fit in your life,” he said. “This is racing and it’s fun and it’s great and there’s a lot of pressure on the line. But at the end of the day, I’m going to put my best out there on the track and hope that’s good enough. If it’s not, it is what it is.”

gdiaz@tribune.com