2015 NASCAR standings: Martin Truex Jr., AJ Allmendinger credit team alliance for strong starts

A technical alliance with Richard Childress Racing has proved beneficial for Martin Truex Jr. and AJ Allmendinger, who each drive for single-car teams.

A look at the Sprint Cup standings and a trio of very familiar names sits 1-2-3 points -- Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Joey Logano.

That those three are so high isn't shocking. Harvick, after all, is the defending Sprint Cup champion while Earnhardt and Logano won a combined nine races. And each entered the season thinking a championship was a realistic possibility.

No, the surprise is who's ranked directly below. As Martin Truex Jr. and AJ Allmendinger reside third and fourth standings, a career-best position for each three races into the season.

Truex's performance has been a revelation. By finishing runner-up Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway he's now placed eighth or better in every race -- a drastic departure from 2014 when Truex had all of five top-10s and ended a career-low 24th in points.

The improvement Truex credits to a stronger technical alliance his single-car team, Furniture Row Racing, shares with Richard Childress Racing, which supplies Furniture Row with engines and technical data. Further enhanced by the addition of new crew chief Cole Pearn, a former RCR employee who brings a more engineering-based mindset to the No. 78 car.

"Cole and our engineers really came up through that RCR program, so they're really tight with the group and really bought into their engineering program, really buying into the way they're building their cars," Truex said.

The tentacles of the alliance also extends to Allmendinger and the single-car JTG Daugherty Racing. Allmendinger finished sixth Sunday following a seventh the week before, consistency missing on intermediate tracks last season despite a Chase for the Sprint Cup berth.

"It was awesome to make the Chase," Allmendinger said. "But if you look at overall points, we were a 22nd-place team through the course of the year.

"I think as a group the RCR alliance we're just better as a whole -- you can see the way the cars have been running at the beginning of the year."

Sprint Cup Standings

Rank	Driver	Wins	Top-5s	Top-10s	Points	Behind
1	Kevin Harvick	1	3	3	134
2	Dale Earnhardt, Jr.	0	3	3	125	-9
3	Joey Logano	1	2	3	123	-11
4	Martin Truex, Jr.	0	1	3	118	-16
5	A.J. Allmendinger	0	0	2	100	-34
6	Kasey Kahne	0	0	1	92	-42
7	Jimmie Johnson	1	2	2	91	-43
8	Denny Hamlin	0	2	2	87	-47
9	Casey Mears	0	0	1	87	-47
10	Matt Kenseth	0	1	2	85	-49
11	Greg Biffle	0	0	1	84	-50
12	Paul Menard	0	0	0	82	-52
13	Ryan Newman	0	1	2	82	-52
14	Clint Bowyer	0	0	1	81	-53
15	Aric Almirola	0	0	0	80	-54
16	David Gilliland	0	0	0	77	-57
17	Brad Keselowski	0	0	2	77	-57
18	Sam Hornish, Jr.	0	0	0	75	-59
19	David Ragan	0	0	0	75	-59
20	Danica Patrick	0	0	0	68	-66
21	Kyle Larson	0	0	1	64	-70
22	Austin Dillon	0	0	0	59	-75
23	Carl Edwards	0	0	0	57	-77
24	Trevor Bayne	0	0	0	55	-79
25	Jamie McMurray	0	0	0	54	-80
26	Michael Annett	0	0	0	52	-82
27	Justin Allgaier	0	0	0	44	-90
28	Michael McDowell	0	0	0	44	-90
29	Brett Moffitt	0	0	1	44	-90
30	Jeff Gordon	0	0	0	42	-92
31	Cole Whitt	0	0	0	41	-93
32	Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.	0	0	0	38	-96
33	Brian Vickers	0	0	0	29	-105
34	Tony Stewart	0	0	0	27	-107
35	Alex Bowman	0	0	0	22	-112

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