Season Review: Martin Truex Jr.

Martin Truex Jr. came up one position short of repeating as champion in the final season for Furniture Row Racing.

After FRR announced in September that they would be ceasing operations at the conclusion of the 2018 season due to a lack of necessary funding to field a competitive team, Truex went on to finish second in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series series standings.

“Given the circumstances and all we had to battle through really to put ourselves in position to try and win another one, we came real close,” Truex Jr. said. “I’m really proud of the effort. When I look back it will just be the end of an era, ending of special team, a special time. You never know if the next chapter will be as successful as the last one. I’m just thankful for all the people around me and for Barney (Visser) and what he gave us and allowed us all to do.”

Truex Jr.’s second-place finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway brought to a close the team’s 14-year existence in the Cup Series. Truex won 17 of FRR’s 18 career wins since joining the organization in 2014 and all of them came since pairing with crew chief Cole Pearn in 2015.

“To go from a two race winner to a 19 race winner, a championship, fourth in points, a second in points, it’s just been amazing,” Truex Jr. said. “Everything about it has been great. Everything about it has been the best thing I’ve ever been a part of. You know, I feel good about my future and going to a great place, and I know we’ll have more success. But it’s going to be different.”

The 2018 season saw Truex Jr. go to Victory Lane four times and it marked his third consecutive year of winning at least four races. His first win of the year came at Auto Club Speedway after winning both stages and leading 125 laps. His other three wins came in the regular season at Pocono Raceway (June), Sonoma Raceway and Kentucky Speedway. He dominated at Kentucky, winning both stages and leading 174 laps.

2018 Statistics

Along with Homestead, Truex finished second four more times and came close to adding more victories to his season total on many occasions. He was leading coming to the checkered flag at both the inaugural race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval and the fall race at Martinsville Speedway until contact relegated him to finishes of 14th and third, respectively.

“There were a lot of races where we were in that same position,” Truex said in regards to the season finale, “leading lots of laps, especially on the long run. It would come down to a short run and a lot of cautions in the end and you would end up getting beat. It’s hard to know how it’s going to play out. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.”

After winning seven times at 1.5-mile tracks in 2017, Kentucky marked Truex’s only win at an intermediate track this season. However, he did rank second in average finish (6.7) among all drivers in the 11 races at that type of track.

“It’s been harder to consistently hit that target this year,” Truex said. “It’s been more difficult. With that said, though, I felt like both Kansas and Texas, we weren’t bad. Man, we had everything go against us. Like everything that could possibly happen wrong went wrong, so we really had to battle and fight. You know, pit stop issues and cautions falling at the wrong time and all that stuff, and we didn’t have any of that last year.”

Since stage racing was implemented in 2017, Truex and the team have capitalized with the format, finishing first in stage points (438) earned in 2017 and fifth (284) in 2018. This year, Truex won 10 stages to push his career stage win total to 29 to lead all drivers.

Truex and Pearn will now move to Joe Gibbs Racing, the team that FRR had a technical alliance with since 2016.

“The good thing about there is I know what to expect,” Truex said. “I’ve met everybody there, I’m familiar with the place, familiar with the people, familiar with the equipment and the cars. I think they understand me and kind of how I tick. The last three years of working together with Furniture Row it’s been a great relationship. Ultimately that’s what led to me getting the opportunity is having that confidence in one another. I’m excited for it.”

2018 Season Reviews – Monster Energy Cup Series Playoff Drivers