This is the first in a multi-part series about Martin Truex Jr. A future NASCAR Hall of Famer, the former Joe Gibbs Racing driver has retired from full-time competition and will be remembered for his many accomplishments, including a dominating 2017 championship run. The latter will largely be the focus of this series.
TRD President David Wilson has one prevailing memory from the 2017 season with Martin Truex Jr.
Wilson, who has a superstition about not going to pit road until the race is over, remembers walking down pit road at Homestead-Miami Speedway on the night of November 19 and crying like a baby. Even when thinking about that moment now, Wilson gets choked up. It was a season that Wilson described as “magical” for many reasons when it ended with Truex and Cole Pearn bringing a championship to single-car Furniture Row Racing team.
At a personal level, Wilson was also dealing with the loss of his father.
So,the tears as Wilson made his way to the championship stage were “just the sheer emotion of it.”
The celebration lasted well into the night. A special celebration, Wilson reflected, where those from Toyota and the team stayed at the track for hours in the open-air suites above pit lane drinking beer. Johnny Morris and members of the Bass Pro Shops group took a lap around the track in the back of a Tundra.
“I’ll never forget the stories and how special that was,” Wilson says.
Truex won at Homestead-Miami to clinch the championship. It was his eighth win of a dominating season in which he also led 2,253 laps, won 19 stages and the regular season title.
It all came together in the second year that Furniture Row Racing ran as a Toyota team. Wilson, however, believes the championship foundation was built in the first season, 2016. Truex went to victory lane four times – the most he’d ever won in a single season. But it’s a season that Wilson believes could have been better.
The postseason came to an end for Truex in the Round of 12 when he was eliminated by a blown engine at Talladega Superspeedway.
“We cost him a shot at a championship in 2016,” Wilson said. “Honestly, I wonder all the time what would have happened if Martin had survived and made it to the Championship 4. Could that have been his first championship?”
Instead, the momentum from what the team accomplished in 2016 carried over into 2017. Truex taught the sport how to stage race and the importance of those bonus points. The No. 78 Toyota was consistently the fastest in the sport; Truex put together an average finish of 9.4 in 36 races. Of Truex’s eight wins, seven of them were won on intermediate racetracks.
“As a sport endeavor, you want the champion to be a deserved champion,” Wilson says. “I think the good news is that more often than not that’s been the case. But I challenge anybody to name a more deserving champion than Martin Truex. Jr. and his championship run in 2017.”
But it wasn’t guaranteed when the series hit the finale. Truex and Furniture Row Racing might have been the best team that season, but it was still a winner-take-all event. Wilson would have had put Kyle Busch, who had been there and won a championship already, as the favorite for the title of the four drivers who were eligible.
Truex, Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Brad Keselowski were the championship contenders. But the postseason had felt like it was a slugfest between Truex and Busch, who combined to win seven of the final 10 races. Matt Kenseth, also a Toyota driver in 2017 for Joe Gibbs, won at Phoenix Raceway to give the manufacturer eight wins in the final 10 weeks of the season.
“Gosh, we were dominant,” Wilson says. “Going into Homestead, we didn’t know who was going to come out on top. It was a lot of emotion and one of the most special years we’ve had in the sport.”
Truex won four races in the postseason. It might have been more impressive what he was doing when not winning, however. In 10 races, Truex finished in the top five nine times. The only blemish in his postseason run was a crash at Talladega Superspeedway and a 23rd place finish.
“A metronome,” Wilson says. “He never let up.”
Wilson loved the way Furniture Row Racing did things their way and the culture built while far away from NASCAR’s North Carolina hub in Denver, Colorado. There were characters across the team, led by Pearn, who made a T-shirt his uniform of choice. Barney Visser, the team owner, stepped up to the plate whenever the team said it needed something.
As one of the smaller teams in the garage, even with an alliance, it wasn’t lost on anyone how having the right people and resources could make a difference. But the quick success of the team even surprised Wilson.
“Alliances are tricky and they get more and more tricky with success of the alliance organization,” Wilson says. “It was a bitter, bitter defeat for Joe Gibbs Racing and Joe Gibbs. Of course, he was gracious about it, but it’s tough when an organization with some of your IP and hardware beats you. That was a wake-up call.”
By the time Truex became a champion, it was his second stint with Toyota and validated the belief the manufacturer had in him. Truex drove a Toyota between 2010 and 2013 at Michael Waltrip Racing, but lost his ride after the ’13 race manipulation scandal at Richmond Raceway saw his sponsor, NAPA, leave.
“I subscribe many times to karma because there is so much karma wrapped around Martin’s story and our story,” Wilson says.
It starts at the end of 2013 when Wilson and former Toyota executive Ed Laukes approached Furniture Row’s Visser and Joe Garone congratulated them on making the postseason with Kurt Busch. A well-earned accomplishment for a single car team. The moment stuck with Visser.
The story continues with Wilson telling Truex, now looking for his next ride, to consider Furniture Row. Wilson felt the group was doing something special.
Truex began driving for Furniture Row in 2014. The organization signed with Toyota going into 2016.
“I had a hand in putting together this very, very special alliance between Furniture Row and Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota,” Wilson says. “Looking back at all of the things I’ve been a part of, I take a tremendous amount of pride in that because I knew there was something special with those guys. We love Martin and wanted to get him back in a Toyota and Joe Gibbs, to his credit, knew how important it was for Toyota to have some diversity of race organizations and he willingly participated. It wouldn’t have worked without Joe Gibbs Racing stepping up.”
Furniture Row Racing closed its doors after the 2018 season and Truex moved into a car at Gibbs. In his years driving a Toyota (Waltrip, Furniture Row and Gibbs), Truex won 32 times.
Truex is headed for the NASCAR Hall of Fame based on his achievements behind the wheel. For Wilson, there is a higher plane of achievement and that’s character. And when it comes to Truex, his character and the grace with how he handled himself in the sport and his partners, will be what Wilson’s admires most.
“I call it ‘the good dude factor’,” Wilson says. “He’s just a good dude and I appreciate him and all he’s done for Toyota, our brand and TRD.”
