Martin Truex Jr. put an end to rumors about his racing future on Friday night. He told reporters that he would be racing for Joe Gibbs Racing again in the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season.
Truex’s current deal with Gibbs was supposed to end at the end of 2022. There were rumors in the spring of this year that he was going to quit racing.
Truex made it clear when he talked to reporters in the media room at Nashville Superspeedway. He will be back in Gibbs’ No. 19 for the 2019 season.
He also said that he and his race team have come to an agreement on a new contract. Truex had been thinking about his options for the past six months.
Truex told his team about this news early on Friday and said he was surprised by how excited they were.
He didn’t think that they wanted him to leave, but he admitted that he had overestimated how they would feel. Truex has been in the Championship 4 in four of the last five seasons, but he has had a slow start in the Next Gen era.
He hasn’t won in 16 races yet, and his average finish is tied for his worst since 2014 when he didn’t make the playoffs.
“They were happier than I expected them to be,” he said. “I just didn’t realize what it meant to them for all of us to work together and the bond we developed. … They’re a great bunch.”
While he has one Cup title, Truex has finished second in the standings three of the past four years. He said that was a motivating factor.
“I’d love to get another opportunity,” he said. “I feel like the chances of that are still there. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be here. I don’t race for anything less than putting myself out there and doing the best we can do.
“I feel like we can still do it. So we’ll keep fighting.”
Truex is a driver who is usually near the front of the pack. He has led more than ten laps in only four races this year, giving him a total of 172 laps led.
At this time last year, he had already done it seven times and led 627 out of a total of 1627 laps. He had run 627 times around the track.
Those numbers aren’t too bad on their own, but with Ty Gibbs, the grandson of the team owner, tearing it up in the Xfinity Series, the rumors about the soon-to-be 42-year-old driver’s future got louder and more frequent as the season went on.
Those numbers aren’t too bad on their own, but Ty Gibbs, the grandson of the team’s owner, tore his ACL last week.
