The Truex Retirement: By The Numbers

Martin Truex Jr.’s retirement announcement today prompts a review some of his career highlights. Truex is not leaving racing: He will still work with JGR on projects to be announced. Bass Pro Shop has been his sponsor for 21 years now. Bass Pro Shop Owner Johnny Morris emphasized that Truex had not only never embarrassed the company, but always made them proud.

Truex’s retirement from full-time Cup Series driving comes a year after that of Kevin Harvick. His leaving the #19 opens a prime opportunity for a new driver, or one of the four drivers losing their rides after Stewart-Haas Racing closes.

Races and Laps Run

Assuming Truex finishes the 20 races left in the season, he will end his career with 19 full seasons and land just outside the top-20 all-time most-races-started list with 693 points races.

• He ran nine Cup races for two years before starting full-time.
• He won two Xfinity championships (back-to-back) prior to starting full-time in Cup
• He ran 20 additional Xfinity races while a full-time Cup Series driver
• Only 32 drivers have more than 600 Cup Series starts
• Only 18 have more than 700 starts
• Truex’s 693 starts would place him just behind Jimmie Johnson (694) and Kyle Busch (694)

Truex has also run 56 exhibition races, including 14 All-Star Races.

Teams

In his 693 races, Truex has run for five different teams:

• 2006-2008: Dale Earnhardt, Inc.
• 2009: Earnhardt Ganassi Racing
• 2010-2013: Michael Waltrip Racing
• 2013-2018: Furniture Row Racing
• 2019-2024: Joe Gibbs Racing

He will have run 216 races for JGR, 180 for Furniture Row, 144 for Waltrip, 117 for DEI and 36 for EGR.

Truex has so far run a total of 185,451 laps in his Cup Series career.

Crew Chiefs

Truex has run with a total of 10 crew chiefs in his career thus far. Assuming current crew chief James Small runs the final 20 races with Truex, they will have completed the same number of races (179) as Truex finished with former crew chief Cole Pearn. He ran 138 races with Bono Manion. Those three crew chiefs have guided 71.6% of Truex’s racing career.

Performance

Truex’s career didn’t really come alive until he moved to Furniture Row Racing. That move initially looked like a career-killer. Truex had been given permission to look for a new ride when NAPA left Michael Waltrip Racing after SpinGate.

The only ride Truex could find was with Furniture Row, a team that started in the Cup Series as a start-and-park team. The first two years (2013-2014) were rough, with just one win in 72 races, but his investment paid off.

Truex won the Cup Series Championship in 2017. He placed second three times: in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The 2015 season saw him finish fourth and he’s currently in fifth place.

Wins

• Truex has 34 wins for a win rate of 5.05%.
• That puts him 25th on the all-time-win list, two races behind Brad Keselowski
• His best year for wins was 2017, when he won 8/36 races, or 22.2% of the season.
• His second-best year for wins was 2019. He won 7/36 races, or 19.4%
• After his first win in 2007, he didn’t win again until 2013.
• After his 2013 win, Truex only had three seasons in which he did not win a race. That number includes this season, so there’s still time left to change it.
• He won at least one race a season in seven consecutive seasons.

Finishes

• Truex currently has just 72 DNFs, for a DNF rate of 9.08%. That gives him 601 running-at-finish races, meaning he completed 89.3% of the races he started.
• He finished 496 races (73.7%) on the lead lap.
• Of the 185,451 laps run, he led 12,639 laps or 6.8% of all laps run.
• With 20 races left, Truex has 146 top-five finishes(21.7%) and 287 top-10 finishes (41.4%)
• His his 2017 championship year, Truex had 19 top-five finishes (52.8%) and 26 top-ten finishes (72.2%.) That was the first year of stage racing, and the Truex/Pearn combination was one of the first to understand how important stage points were.

I’ll have a more complete reflection on the Truex retirement announcement at the end of the season, but just wanted to get this out now.