Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Auto racing
Martin Truex Jr. is facing a defense of his Cup Series title and finding a sponsor for next season.
BRISTOL, Tenn. — NASCAR champion Martin Truex Jr. needs sponsorship to stay with his championship-winning race team.
Truex is locked in a fierce battle with former champions Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick in his push to defend last year’s Cup Series title. His Furniture Row Racing team is in the mix even though the future of the No. 78 team is in flux.
Furniture Row is seeking a primary sponsor for next year, and does not have contracts with Truex or manufacturer Toyota. He said he hopes to have a better idea on what his future holds in the next few weeks.
“Right now, we need sponsorship. That’s as simple as it gets,” Truex said Friday. “Is there a 50 percent chance we get that in the next couple of weeks? Or is there a 100 percent chance? Or is there 2 percent? I don’t know. I can tell you that everything really is based upon that.”
Colorado-based Furniture Row for years was sponsored by team owner Barney Visser, who with Truex was finally able to sell inventory and bring funding to the car. The team had a breakout 2018 season and won the Cup title, but 5-Hour Energy is leaving at the end of the season and Visser doesn’t want to return to funding the operation out of pocket.
Truex won a career-best eight races last year and his first Cup title. He’s got four wins this year and is considered part of the dominant “Big 3” along with Busch and Harvick.
Now his name is suddenly mentioned as a potential replacement for Kurt Busch at Stewart-Haas Racing, where he would be Harvick’s teammate, or a myriad of other possibilities.
NASCAR has moved the start of Saturday night’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway up one hour because of threats of rain.
The start is now scheduled for 6:45 p.m.
Two more drivers are headed to the checkered flag of their NASCAR careers and the laps are winding down for a golden age of racing.
Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler both said this will be their final season of racing full time as they become the latest two veterans to find they no longer want to be part of the traveling circus. Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Danica Patrick have already given up their seats in stock cars to spend more time doing, well, everything they’ve missed in life.
Kahne and Sadler, who have a combined 1,589 starts at the NASCAR national level, want to spend more time with their kids. They are part of a group of drivers that broke into NASCAR when the sport went mainstream and money poured in from corporations all over the world.