Martin Truex Jr. to retire at end of NASCAR season
Martin Truex Jr., driver of the #19 Auto-Owners Insurance Toyota, looks on during practice for the NASCAR Cup Series
Martin Truex Jr., the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion and one of the best drivers of his generation, will retire at the end of the season, he announced Friday.
The 43-year-old Truex is the oldest active full-time Cup driver.
Martin Truex Jr. makes it official that he is retiring from full-time racing at the end of the 2024 seasons
His exit plans were not unexpected as he has seriously mulled retirement for the past few years, often waffling on what decision to make. In both 2022 and 2023, Truex didn’t firmly commit to race the following season until the summer. This was shaping up to again be the case this year, with Truex saying in recent weeks that he had yet to make up his mind.
Truex, in his 19th full-time Cup Series season, touts a resume that will likely earn him first-ballot induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame once eligible two years after his retirement. In addition to the 2017 Cup championship, he finished runner-up three times and advanced to the championship playoff final on five occasions. His 34 career wins include multiple triumphs in crown jewel races, with two wins in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte and one in the Southern 500 at Darlington. He is also a two-time champion in the Xfinity Series (2004-05), NASCAR’s second-tier division.
“(The thought of being in the Hall) is really special to me, but I try not to get too caught up in it,” Truex said in February. “I’m still writing my history. I’d still like to add some more things to it to hopefully get in there on the first try.”
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Truex’s announcement comes with 20 races remaining in 2024. Although winless, he ranks fifth in the points standings, third in laps led and fourth in average finish.
The timing of Truex’s announcement in the middle of the season, instead of a long goodbye tour, fits his unassuming personality. He has tended to eschew the spotlight, preferring to quietly go about his job, even if it meant he was often overlooked compared to contemporaries such as Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano — all Cup champions with higher profiles.
Truex won the NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2017.
Truex’s departure creates a coveted opening at Joe Gibbs Racing, regarded as one of NASCAR’s elite organizations. The team is not expected to name Truex’s replacement immediately, but Chase Briscoe is considered one of the leading candidates to fill the vacancy, sources briefed on the team’s plans said.
Briscoe, 29, currently drives for Stewart-Haas Racing, which announced last month it was closing down at the end of the 2024 season. He has scored one win in 124 Cup starts and qualified for the 2022 playof
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Briscoe’s ability is held in high regard within the garage. A team executive told The Athletic in May that he possesses the kind of talent “you find a way to sign even if you don’t have a spot.”
“I definitely think that this is one of the more unique and interesting silly seasons in the fact there are so many drivers (on the market),” Briscoe said on Tuesday. “We’ve never really been in that situation where there are this many drivers that are already in the Cup Series looking for a job, and then you also have the normal Xfinity and Truck guys trying to move up, too.
“I’m just trying to make sure that I’m not left out. I don’t have anything to fall back on. I’m not like some of the other people, where they have family business or something like that and with a two-and-a-half-year-old and a wife and then twins on the way. I definitely can’t afford to be left out and not have anything, so I’ve just been really trying to do everything I can to put my best effort forward on the racetrack and obviously off the racetrack too and just trying to prove my worth to whoever out there may be looking.”
