“They said we were crazy”

Truex and Denver’s Furniture Row Racing did it their way

In the few fleeting seconds between a tense sprint away from trouble in his rearview mirror and the celebratory burnout that nearly choked him unconscious, Martin Truex Jr. lost control of his focus.

“I saw the checkered flag and I was a complete train wreck,” he said. “I broke down like a little baby, just crying my eyes out.”

The driver of Denver’s No. 78 car, against nearly every traditional notion of what it means to become a NASCAR Cup champion, was about to lift two trophies for Furniture Row Racing, the only full-time team outside Charlotte, N.C., an oddball mountainbased entry in the Southern-dominated stock car’s top circuit.

Truex, the 37-year-old Carolina cast-off, and Furniture Row, the guys from Denver who were dismissed as weirdos since their inception in 2005, held off an elite crop of former champions to win the final race of the season, on the 1.5-mile oval at Miami-Homestead Speedway.

With it, the 78’s eighth victory this year, Truex and FRR became NASCAR champions: one trophy for a race win, and another as the season’s top ride.

“All the adrenaline and emotion just took over. I couldn’t handle it. I held it together for so long,” Truex said Monday during a victory tour stop in Denver. “But I’d never felt anything like that. Just the emotions, the thoughts, all the things with racing in my life, all the troubles that we went through. It was crazy all the stuff that flashed through my eyes.”

Truex’s coronation was never a given. At Homestead, he was forced into a winner-takes-all final race against Kyle Busch, the 2016 champion, and Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski.

And the 78, for the first time in weeks, was running slow at a challenging place.

“Homestead is different,” said FRR crew chief Cole Pearn. “It’s been an Achilles’ heel track for us in a way. We knew we had to get better there.”

Knowing Truex was running through a dominating season but wary of a dramatic final race, Pearn wrangled a two-day testing at Homestead in September. The first day “was really bad,” Pearn said. But they gathered evidence of how to run there.

With 32 laps remaining, after a pit and restart, Truex took the lead. But his car was not the fastest on the track. And Busch in the No. 18 car was making up ground.

“We had run a conservative line all day,” Pearn said. “When it came down to the end, it was time to take a risk.”

His crew got him out front, but Truex was forced to take over. He built a 1.4-second lead on Harvick, but about 10 seconds later, Busch took over second place. The 18 grew bigger in Truex’s rearview. Busch started running laps about 0.4 seconds faster then Truex. If he kept driving the same path, Truex was set to lose.

“I knew I had to find something before he got to me or he was gonna blow right by me,” Truex said. “And I knew I had to do it quick.”

So he changed course. He found a high line near the wall with better grip and a faster course. It was dangerous. In practice Saturday, Truex clipped the wall running a high line. If he clipped it again, disaster could hit.

With 10 laps remaining, Truex started sensing the finish line. He measured the view in his mirror to allow Busch to move closer, a strategy meant to take as much clean air away from Busch as possible.

The 78 got better every year, winning a race in 2015, then four more in 2016.

“We heard it every now and then: ‘You’ll never get a championship,’ ” said Joe Garone, FRR’s general manager. “They said we were crazy. They said they would have supported us if we’d just done it the normal way. It just adds fuel to the fire.”

“People are coming up to me now and calling me champ,” Truex said. “And I’m like, that really sounds good. This is the top of the world in racing.”