A driver who built his name in Busch racing, endured years without a win and then took the NASCAR Cup championship in 2017.
Martin Truex Jr. is a former full-time NASCAR driver whose 2017 Cup title came with Furniture Row Racing. He also won Xfinity titles in 2004 and 2005, then drove for Joe Gibbs Racing and Tricon Garage before stepping back from full-time racing.
Martin Truex Jr. is a semi-retired American stock car driver who won the NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2017 and two Xfinity Series titles in 2004 and 2005. His route to the top ran through go-kart tracks in New Jersey, a family racing name and a long wait for Cup success.
He spent most of his Cup career across five teams, and he returned to the family number 56 at the end of his time in the sport. This article follows his path from the Modified division to the championship, the lean years that followed and the seasons that ended his full-time career.
Who is Martin Truex Jr.?
Martin Lee Truex Jr. was born on 29 June 1980 in Mayetta, New Jersey, a community in Stafford Township. He finished his schooling at Southern Regional High School in 1998. He last drove the No. 56 Toyota Camry for Tricon Garage, and he is the 2017 Cup champion.
His father, Martin Truex Sr., raced in the East Series during the 1990s and died before his son's breakthrough. His younger brother, Ryan, is a two-time consecutive ARCA Menards Series East champion, and cousins on the family side also competed in late model racing.
His 2017 Cup title followed a long wait and an unusually dominant stage-winning season.
How did he start in racing?
Truex began in go-karts at New Egypt Speedway in Ocean County, New Jersey, when the track was still paved before it switched to dirt. As soon as New Jersey rules allowed, he entered Modified racing at Wall Stadium in 1998, aged eighteen.
In 2000 he moved south to Mooresville, North Carolina, renting a house from Dale Earnhardt Jr. before buying his own home there. He followed his late father's footsteps by joining the Busch North Series, where he ran three full seasons between 2000 and 2002 in the family No. 56 SeaWatch Chevrolet.
The Busch North years produced thirteen poles and five wins, which gave him a strong reputation in the paddock. He made his first Busch Series start at Dover in 2001 and then began appearing in the national series with Chance 2 Motorsports, the team of Dale Earnhardt Jr.
How did the Busch Series titles come about?
In 2004 Truex was a full-time Chance 2 driver and won his first Busch Series race at Bristol. Three more victories followed in the next seven races, including Talladega and Nazareth Speedway. He led the points after Nazareth, lost the lead to Kyle Busch, and then a strong second half carried him to the title.
His Cup debut came the same year at Atlanta, filling in for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was recovering from burns sustained in a sports car accident. Truex started 33rd and finished 37th, which was a modest start to a career that would soon accelerate.
He defended the Busch title in 2005, a second straight championship. That year he also won a Mexican event, the first points race the series had staged outside the country, and his first Daytona International Speedway victory came on 1 July.
What was his Cup career like at DEI?
In 2006 Truex took over the No. 1 Chevrolet at Dale Earnhardt, Inc. full-time, recording two top-five finishes and finishing 19th in points. The next season brought his first Cup win at the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Open, which qualified him for the All-Star Challenge.
He then won the Autism Speaks 400, leading 216 of its 400 laps. The victory gave him a seven-second margin over pole sitter Ryan Newman and lifted him to thirteenth in the points. Third at Pocono and second at Michigan followed, and a fifteenth-place finish at Richmond secured a spot in the Chase.
The 2008 season was quieter. He collected eleven top-ten finishes, finished fifteenth in the standings and did not reach victory lane, but the team was preparing for a structural change that would reshape its future.
How did his years at Michael Waltrip Racing unfold?
Dale Earnhardt, Inc. was absorbed by Chip Ganassi Racing in 2009, and Truex spent one season with Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing. He won the pole for the Daytona 500 and later added poles at Atlanta and Phoenix, before leaving at the end of the year.
From 2010 he drove the No. 56 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing, a number his late father had raced in the Grand National Division. His first race for the team was a sixth-place finish in the Daytona 500, but after several setbacks he settled into a solid run that saw him finish 22nd in the points for 2010.
The 2011 season included a violent crash at Martinsville, when a stuck throttle sent him into Kasey Kahne and then head-on into the wall. Truex climbed out and checked on Kahne, who was uninjured. The collision was the hardest of his career, but he was back in the field the following week.
The 2012 season started with a seventh at Daytona and a $200,000 bonus. He led 69 laps at Texas and 173 laps at Kansas, where he dominated but finished behind Denny Hamlin. He ended the year eleventh in points, with no wins, but his speed was clear.
What happened in the 2013 season?
The 2013 season was up and down. A Martinsville crash and a Dover engine failure hurt his results, and at Bristol he struck an inside wall at a bad angle and broke his right wrist. He kept racing with a cast on that wrist and finished third at Atlanta with it still bothering him.
The highlight came at Sonoma, where he broke a streak of 218 races without a win. He started 14th and won by more than eight seconds over Jeff Gordon, and only Bill Elliott had gone longer without a victory in the top series. The result was the second win for a car numbered 56 in the sport's top division.
The end of the season was overshadowed by a points scandal. At Richmond, the last regular-season event, he won a tiebreaker for the final wildcard place over Ryan Newman. NASCAR later penalised Michael Waltrip Racing for manipulating race results, and points penalties removed Truex from the Chase, putting Newman and Jeff Gordon in his place.
How did Furniture Row Racing revive his career?
For 2014 Truex joined Furniture Row Racing in the No. 78 Chevrolet, a car vacated by Kurt Busch, and the team brought his former Michael Waltrip crew with him. He started the year with an outside pole run for the Daytona 500, but his engine failed on lap 31, and he finished 24th in the standings that season.
The 2015 season marked the turnaround. He led the most laps in the Sprint Unlimited and then recorded fourteen top-ten finishes in the first fifteen races, a start that only Richard Petty in 1969 had matched. His Pocono victory ended a 69-race winless streak, and he finished fourth in the final standings, the best result for both him and the team.
In 2016 the team switched to Toyota, and Bass Pro Shops became its lead sponsor. He lost the Daytona 500 by 0.010 seconds to Denny Hamlin, the closest finish in the race's history. At Charlotte he dominated the Coca-Cola 600, out front for 392 of 400 laps, a race record that earned his first win of the year.
The 2016 Southern 500 at Darlington brought a second victory, and his season was one of the most competitive of the period. He moved on to the Round of 12, where his engine failure in the Talladega elimination race ended his title hopes.
How did he win the 2017 championship?
The 2017 season began with a win at Las Vegas, where Truex was the first to sweep all three stages of the new format introduced that year. He followed with a victory at Kansas and then a dominant win at Kentucky, where he won every stage and led 152 of 267 laps.
His regular-season championship was confirmed at Darlington, when a stage win clinched the title. He then won at Watkins Glen, his first road course victory, in an emotional race for the team, whose crew chief, Cole Pearn, was coping with the loss of a close friend.
Truex started the playoffs by winning at Chicagoland, then won at Charlotte and Kansas to advance through the rounds. He reached the championship finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, won the race at Miami and took the title. He had won 19 of the 108 stages across the season, a dominant performance by any measure.
How did his results compare season by season?
| Season | Team | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Furniture Row Racing | 24th in points |
| 2015 | Furniture Row Racing | Fourth in points, Pocono win |
| 2016 | Furniture Row Racing | Four wins, out in the Round of 12 |
| 2017 | Furniture Row Racing | Cup champion |
| 2019 | Joe Gibbs Racing | Seven wins, runner-up in points |
| 2020 | Joe Gibbs Racing | One win, seventh in points |
| 2021 | Joe Gibbs Racing | Three wins, runner-up in points |
| 2022 | Joe Gibbs Racing | Winless, 17th in points |
| 2024 | Joe Gibbs Racing | Tenth in points |
What did his final seasons in the sport look like?
After Furniture Row closed at the end of 2018, Truex and crew chief Cole Pearn moved to Joe Gibbs Racing for 2019, taking over the No. 19. His first season produced seven wins, the most in the series, and he was the first driver to lead the wins column after switching teams since Matt Kenseth in 2013.
The 2019 title race ended at Homestead with a pit-stop error that switched tyres on the wrong sides. He recovered to finish second to teammate Kyle Busch, and the championship slipped away. Pearn left the team later that year.
The following seasons were more mixed. In 2020 he won at Martinsville but missed the Championship 4 field. In 2021 he won at Phoenix, Martinsville and Darlington, and he also won a Truck Series race at Bristol's dirt track, which made him one of 36 drivers with wins in every top-tier NASCAR series.
He finished second in the 2021 points after a championship race that came down to Kyle Larson. The 2022 season was winless, and he failed to make the playoffs, his first miss since 2014. In 2023 he won the Busch Light Clash, ended a 54-race winless streak at Dover and clinched the regular-season title at the Daytona night race.
On 14 June 2024 he announced that he would step away from full-time racing after the season. He finished the year tenth in the standings. In 2025 Tricon Garage entered the No. 56 Toyota in the Daytona 500, and Truex was the fastest open car in qualifying, but he finished 38th after a crash.
What is his life outside racing?
Truex's personal life has included a long relationship with Sherry Pollex, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014. The couple ended their relationship in January 2023 but remained close friends until her death on 17 September 2023. In 2007 they founded the Martin Truex Jr. Foundation, which helps children battling pediatric cancer.
He is a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Philadelphia Flyers, and his holding company, which owns a small aircraft fleet, moved into human organ transport in 2019.
