This is the second 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.
To understand or appreciate how Furniture Row Racing put together one of the most dominant NASCAR Cup Series championship runs in modern history, one must look back to seasons prior.
โWe had one of the roughest struggles of a season (in 2014) you could ever hope to have compared to our expectations, and then we had the same exact group of people in 2017, essentially,โ Matt Faulkner, then the director of engineering at Furniture Row, told RACER. โEverything we learned between those years to be successful together, we all were aware of what we were doing differently and what it took to succeed with car preparation to be that good compared to sucking so bad in 2014. I feel like it created a bond among us that strengthened us like no other race team Iโve been a part of.โ
The 2014 season was the first with Martin Truex Jr. and they finished 24th in the standings. The five top-10 finishes earned were a backslide from the 16 earned with Kurt Busch driving the car the year prior. So too was the 20.2 average finish for Truex compared to the 14.7 of Busch.
โWe gave (Truex) bad cars all year long,โ Faulkner said.
The cars were better in 2015, the year Cole Pearn was named crew chief. He was just one piece of the puzzle, though. Blake Harris, now a crew chief for Hendrick Motorsports, was the car chief. Peter Craik, now an IndyCar Series crew chief, was the race engineer. The list goes on. The team picked up a win at Pocono Raceway in June and then made a surprising run to the Championship 4.
โHad we not been able to run that well, we might not have been able to justify ourselves as a competitive enough teammate to be part of the Joe Gibbs program in 2016,โ Faulkner said. โSo, the changes made after 2014 led to a successful Richard Childress Racing (alliance) in 2015 that got us deserving of a Gibbs campaign. The foundation of that technical alliance and working with them for a year and getting used to the new people we were working with at Gibbs helped us maximize our performance in 2017 and โ18.โ
A common theme when discussing Furniture Rowโs championship is the year before: 2016. Truex drove the No. 78 into victory lane four times. It was the season when Faulkner remembers the expectations of a championship began to take hold. Being eliminated from the postseason because of a blown engine at Talladega Superspeedway had the team looking at each other in a what could have been way.
โThatโs when realistic championship talks started to happen,โ Faulkner said.
Tommy DiBlasi, then the tire specialist at Furniture Row, remembers the team going into 2017 with the mindset of โweโre the best team and should win every (expletive) race.โ
A season of success was built on the camaraderie within the team. Pearn gets the credit for doing that, described as methodical in his hiring. DiBlasi explained how Pearn looked for individuals who had experience and the willingness to work day and night, but also someone that could hang out and drink beer. Plus, there was still testing in place that kept a team close with the amount of time they were together.
โWe did everything together,โ DiBlasi said. โWe ate every meal together. We drank together. We hung out together. If we were home in Colorado, we only had each other.โ
James Small worked on the second Furniture Row car that Erik Jones drove in 2017. The isolation of the organization being based in Colorado made it an โus against the worldโ mentality and the two teams worked together on everything. Because it was a small team, there was one big open-air office where the engineers, crew chiefs and others all sat together.
By the time Truex sealed the 2017 Cup Series title, the No.78 team had bonded into a tight group with an ‘us against the world’ mentality. Nigel Kinrade/Motorsport Images
โBarney was a great owner in the way he went about it and the amount he invested in the team,โ Small said. โHe supported everybody and let them do their jobs. If you needed something, he made sure you had it. It didnโt matter how much it cost.โ
And so, from early on in 2017, it was clear Truex and his team were the best in the series. None of them, however, were surprised by how the season played out with eight wins, 19 stage wins and 2,253 laps led. In the regular season alone, Truex accumulated 53 playoff points.
โIt was awesome,โ DiBlasi said. โAnd it was more than what people see on paper. We had three practices a weekend that year, and every Friday practice we were P1 on the board. The Saturday practices we were P1 on the board. If we second or third in practice, it was like, OK, we need to get our crap together because whatโs going on?
โWe were the fastest car no matter where we went. And we dominated races; we didnโt just win.โ
The numbers were staggering. Truex led laps in 27 of the seasonโs 36 races, and 10 of those races saw him led a triple digit number of laps. But of those 10 races where he led more than 100 laps, Truex won just three of them.
In the final 10 races (the postseason), Truex finished outside the top five only once (Talladega) and led laps in seven of those races. In all, Truex led 607 laps in 10 races.
Truex and Toyota teammate Kyle Busch combined to win six of the first seven postseason races. The final blow went to Truex in the season finale, as he won the race and the championship. Busch finished second in the race and the championship.
โWell, the way youโre describing it, it sounds really exciting,โ Busch laughed when asked about the postseason back and forth with Truex. โI donโt remember. The 2017 playoffs โฆ did I win in the playoffs? I won Dover, right? Thatโs when I beat Chase .โ
Busch won at New Hampshire and Dover early in the postseason. His final win was at Martinsville Speedway, securing his place in the Championship 4.
โOh, Martinsville. Yeah,โ Busch said. โWas that after Denny dumped (Chase)? OK, yeah. The gloves were off after that point. So, yeah, it was fun.
โThere were some good moments in that one and then the defeat. Truex deserved and earned that championship, although we had him beat that day. So that (expletive) me off. We could have won that year. Thatโs probably the most memorable piece of it that I have.โ
In the five years Truex drove for Furniture Row, the team won 17 races. But they also earned 91 top-10 finishes, which was more than those earned in the previous 10 years of its existence combined.
A year after winning the championship, Truex and Furniture Row returned to the Championship 4 and finishing second in the standings. It was the final year of operation for Visserโs team.
