This is the third and final piece 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 was the primary focus of this series.
Martin Truex Jr. spent many years in the early part of his NASCAR Cup Series career feeling envious of drivers who arrived at the racetrack knowing they could win. What, Truex thought, did he have to do to get into that position?
It turns out that signing with Furniture Row Racing and being a driver that Toyota wanted to reunite with was the answer. Truex became one of those drivers he once envied in 2016, and drove to a Cup Series championship in 2017 in dominating fashion.
โIt was just amazing to be able to drove those cars and have that team,โ Truex told RACER. โIt was just clicking and effortless. Weโd just go do it. Itโs crazy to even think about, and you think itโs going to go on forever and you get used to that, and when things arenโt going that way itโs harder to deal with. But just an amazing year. A great group of guys.โ
Itโs been seven years since Truex hoisted the championship trophy. It proved to be the only one in his career, as he retired from full competition after the 2024 season.
But if a driver can only win the Cup Series title once, doing so in the fashion Truex and his No. 78 team did would be hard to pass up. In the elimination era, it will be remembered as one of the, if not the, most dominant championship run in history.
Truex breezed through the first year of stage racing with 19 stage wins (a total of 440 stage points to lead the series) and 53 playoff points going into the postseason. He won a total of eight races and led 2,253 laps. The laps led are the second most by a champion in a season in the elimination era (Kyle Larson topped Truex in 2021 with 2,581 laps led).
The 26 top-10 finishes Truex earned were the most by a champion in the elimination era until two years later. Kyle Busch topped his teammate with 27 top-10 finishes in his 2019 championship run.
โYou just take it week by week and donโt really look at last week; itโs always forward,โ Truex said. โYou donโt really enjoy it that much until itโs over. I think we all knew how special it was when it was happening but it was, โWhatโs next? Whatโs next?โ
“We had fun along the way; we werenโt all business. It was a fun group who would celebrate wins and do fun stuff. But it was always, โAll right, what are we doing next?โ It went by quick.โ
And yet it wasnโt all smooth sailing. On the weekends that Truex wasnโt dominating, he wasnโt finishing. The team earned six DNFs in 2017, including one of the most infuriating when he led 198 laps at Richmond Raceway and was wrecked from second place โ after losing the lead off pit road โ by Toyota teammate Denny Hamlin on the final lap. Truex then awkwardly accepted the regular season championship (which he had clinched a week prior) during post-race as he and the team were visibly upset about missing out on a victory.
โThere were a lot of ups and down and a lot of heartache off the track, which was tough,โ Cole Pearn told RACER. โBut on the racing side, it was good. We were strong all year. We won a bunch of races, but we definitely could have won a bunch more if things had gone our way. We had the speed.โ
The team’s 2017 success owed a lot to the chemistry between Truex and Pearn. “(Pearn) always had a plan,” Truex says. “And most of the time it worked.” Lesley Ann Miller/Motorsport Images
Pearn dealt with the loss of his childhood best friend during the season. The team then mourned the loss of road crew fabricator Jim Watson, who suffered a heart attack, the Saturday night before winning at Kansas Speedway in the playoffs.
โYou always have stuff going on away from the track guys are thinking about but they did a great job of staying focused and doing the job,โ Truex said. โThey were highly invested and 100% racers who were all in on what we were doing, so it was easy for them when stuff happened to go to work and focus on that.
โIt made it look easy. I guess watching the races, I made it look easy, too, but man, it wasnโt. It was tough. I was running like I was on fire a lot just trying to stay out front or get to the front. It was a blast.โ
As the team arrived at Homestead-Miami Speedway to compete for the championship, team owner Barney Visser was absent. Visser was unable to travel, having undergone successful bypass surgery after suffering a heart attack. He watched his team triumph from afar.
โWe had gone down there and tested because it had never been our strongest track,โ Pearn recalled. โAnd we were able to figure some things out that really helped us going into that weekend. I do remember we had screwed up a little bit going into the race, maybe made a couple errors in our simulation, but it let us be stronger later in the race when the sun went down. It was a grind of a race trying to hang on. But once the track gripped up and went to nighttime, we were able to get clean air and were in a better state.โ
Truex has a slightly different memory of finale weekend.
โWell, we were really good in practice and Coleโs strategy was to not focus on having the best long run car,โ Truex said. โHe wanted something that was going to be good and be fast when the sun went down. I was complaining all day about it. Honestly, we werenโt that great, especially early in the race. It was a struggle for me behind the wheel to figure it out; the car wasnโt driving good and I was trying to be smart and not make mistake while not lose track position.
โThen he just did his thing. He was like, โStick with me here. Iโm going to help you. I know whatโs happening.โ I had so much trust in him that I could chill, do my thing and wait on him. Sure enough, we got it better and better and toward the end of the race, the car was amazing. He always had a plan and most of the time it worked.โ
As easy as it might have looked, Truex doesnโt deny the pressure he felt to close the deal on any given Sunday. In fact, he describes it as a โhuge amountโ of pressure, knowing how good his cars were and needing to take advantage of the situation.
โYou know those opportunities arenโt going to continue forever and ever,โ Truex said. โYou hope they will, but the reality is, things change quickly in this sport. So to be able to win the races we did was huge, and there were a lot that got away still. Not really in 2017, but other years leading up to that. I think it made us hungrier and work harder to try to fix the issues and figure out how to get through those things.โ
Truex and Furniture Row Racing won 17 races together in five seasons. Itโs the most wins Truex earned with any team he drove for during his Cup Series career. The No. 78 group also made three appearances in the Championship 4, including the 2017 title triumph.
