Martin Truex, Jr. Announces Retirement at the End of the 2024 Season

CONCORD, NC – RIS – Martin Truex, Jr. made an expected announcement today.  Truex announced Friday that he plans to retire from full-time competition at the conclusion of the 2024 season.  Truex, the 2017 title winner, has raced full-time in NASCAR’s premier series for nearly two decades, compiling 34 Cup wins, 146 top-five finishes and 287 top 10s.

The year 2007 was the first Cup Series championship for Truex and also the first for upstart Furniture Row Racing. It was the beginning of a prolonged era of excellence for Truex Jr., whose five Championship 4 appearances are tied for most all time. The driver/crew-chief pairing of Truex and Pearn was one of the most memorable – and fruitful – of the 2010s, netting a whopping 24 victories from 2015-19.

Pearn followed Truex from FRR to Joe Gibbs Racing, where Truex has been the driver of the No. 19 Toyota since 2019. The duo collected seven race wins that first season, and Truex has added eight more in the years since with crew chief James Small following Pearn’s retirement.

The New Jersey native stood as one of the last remaining ties in the sport to Dale Earnhardt Incorporated, having started his full-time Cup career with the team as a rookie in 2006 and picking up his first career win a season later at his home track of Dover Motor Speedway.

Truex also won back-to-back Xfinity Series titles in 2004 and ’05 for Chance2 Motorsports with crew chief Kevin “Bono” Manion before his 2017 Cup conquest.

“Just felt like the right time for me,” Truex said in his press conference. “Honestly, I’ve thought about it a lot the past few seasons and just waited for, waited for that feeling in my mind to be positive. Like, this is, okay I’m good, I want to do something else. Yeah, something just felt different this year for me I felt like it was time to slow down and do something else. It’s been a great ride, though, obviously.”.

No announcement has been made about his replacement in the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry.