ONE LAST RACE STANDS BETWEEN TRUEX, DREAM
An empty NASCAR garage is a strange site, with its clean floors and quiet corners, but all that remained at Furniture Row Racing headquarters on Tuesday night was the echo of a Phil Collins song and some hopeful hugs. The No. 78 car, fabricated and fortified in FRR’S North Park Hill neighborhood in Denver, boarded a long-haul big rig for Miami and left behind a team of mechanics with plenty of conf idence.
Waiting on the other end of a cross-country trip was Martin Truex Jr., driver of the 78, the pilot in position to complete a season that is nearly unheard of in NASCAR’S modern history.
Truex on Sunday afternoon will drive Denver’s No. 78 Toyota at Homestead Speedway in South Florida as he competes to win stock car racing’s top prize, the Cup championship, in a winner-take-all sprint over 267 laps totaling 400½ miles.
The three drivers Truex will race against — Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski — are NASCAR’S old guard. They have each won championships. Truex, though, stands to become a sweeping new face of auto racing.
“I’ve turned into a different driver,” Truex said in a phone interview from Miami. “I push, push, push, push. Always pushing. I’m always looking for more. There were times in my career when a top-five finish was good enough. But if you’re not winning races, you’re not doing your job.
We’ve really become a different team. It’s really been a dream come true for me.”
In any other year, Truex, the 37-year-old New Jersey son of a racer on the regional circuits, would already be NASCAR’S champion. His 2017 was so dominating, Truex would have earned the season title last week, if not for a rules change to NASCAR’S scoring system before this season. Truex won more races (7), finished in more top-fives (18), top 10s (25), led more laps (2,175), led more miles (2,941) and won more stages (19) than any other driver.
Instead, Truex and the other semifinalists had their points reset for one final race.
“If it wasn’t set back at zero, we’d probably all be congratulating Martin right now with the season he’s had,” Keselowski said. “But it is. Everyone has an opportunity.”
Truex has been here before. His career was reset at the end of the 2013 season when the political fallout of a race-manipulation scandal ensnared Michael Waltrip Racing, Truex’s team, and he lost a playoff spot and, eventually, his spot on the team.
That’s how Truex ended up on a misfit team in the first place, Denver’s Furniture Row Racing, the only top-circuit team based outside Charlotte, N.C. That’s how he suddenly, in a last-chance scenario, turned around his career on a one-car team, what was once a laughable idea, to make the playoffs in 2015.
And that’s how Truex is now in position to upset the NASCAR order.
“It’s one race to take it all,” he said. “Anything can happen. But I have so much confidence in our guys. We’re in the best position we can be in. We’re making all the right decisions. We’re handling that pressure.”
Truex’s rise with the 78 found a large amount of disdain from the old guard. They were a team with just one race victory over 10 years before Truex arrived. He won a race in 2015, then four more in 2016. But 2017 changed the team’s fortune.
“I’m Team Martin this week, for sure,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “With what Martin’s been through as a driver, it would be awesome to see him put his name on that trophy. Martin’s just a great guy. He has zero ego.”
The 78’s dominance over the field peaked at Kentucky in July. Truex cruised to victory, at one point extending a 15-second lead in front of the pack, something akin to a 35point lead in an NBA game. He would win again a month later at Watkins Glen in New York.
But Truex punched a ticket to the post- season early on, with a victory at Las Vegas in the third week, clinching an automatic berth. It allowed Truex and FRR to “just be aggressive and win races,” Truex said. He was especially successful on 1.5-mile tracks, winning a Nascar-record six on those ovals.
Homestead, too, runs 1.5 miles. It’s why Truex is considered by many to be the favorite, despite his outsider status. The trick at Homestead, though, is to find a high line near the wall, something that at times has vexed Treux.
At Charlotte in October, he struggled from the green flag. The car was dragging. Truex started 17th. And his longtime girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, was stuck at home after a recurrence of ovarian cancer forced her into another round of chemotherapy.
But Truex rallied, leading 91 of the final 104 laps to win.
“Charlotte was our best race. We weren’t very good. We struggled to hang on to the top 10,” Truex said. “To turn it around, that’s a championship performance. Anybody can lead the most laps if you have the fastest car. But championship performance means fighting when you’re down, figuring out how to make it work when you’re not at your best.”
Heading to Homestead, Truex and the 78 finished among the top five in eight of the past nine races, including two victories. The Denver team is peaking. When Truex last had a chance at a title, in a four-way race-off in 2015 at Homestead, he finished fourth. Busch sailed to victory. The 78, it seemed, might never hurdle the final hump.
“We were looking for magic. This year we have it,” Truex said. “They say you have to lose one to win one. We are a lot more confident this time. We’ve come a long way. But I’m tired of talking about it. I’ll have fun when I strap in and put on my helmet. I want to be in my element.”