Martin Truex, Jr. is rumored to be retiring at the end of the 2024 season as reported by The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi. With that Truex has had a great career that can end on the highest of notes. As well as this, the bigger question is what comes next for the Joe Gibbs Racing #19 car in 2025 and beyond. Martin Truex Jr. is retiring. Who gets the 19 car?
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40 comments
Who do you think replaces MTJ in the #19? (Or #18 if it is rebranded)
Briscoe
Noah Gragson because that would save Joe Gibbs from having to search for sponsors
Neither option, I believe, happens. Instead, JGR downsizes to three cars, and Bass Pro Shops sends more funding to either Dillon or Gragson.
Berry or Austin Hill if he wins the Xfinity Title.
Buschy Buschy
As a Truex fan I’m crushed. He’s had a fantastic career. Thank you Martin for all the memories and amazing moments.
As a fan of his, you might get a laugh out of this…but I fell out of being a regular nascar fan for many years. And at the time I stopped following, I was familiar with Truex but he had been pretty average – at best – back then. And not just struggling as a rookie, he’d been around for a while. Anyways, Years later I come back to the sport during Covid (2021) and I was incredibly surprised to find he was a future hall of famer and one of the best drivers out there! It was pretty surreal! Imagine if – say – Harrison Burton goes on to become a champion and top 5 guy in the sport. It was that wild.
Obviously I went back and read about him and his career to catch up and he is a great story and a great driver. But it was so surreal at the time. Also, to find out about Furniture Row was about as equally surprising…they were basically RWR-level waaay back in the day. Heck of a story with the pairing of them and Truex.
He truly was the Fernando Alonso of NASCAR.
@@FakeGokuUltraMore like Jenson Button since they’re both late bloomers
The real question I have is with James Smalls. It’s going to be a new era and JGR may want to solidify that fact, such as by bringing Chase Briscoe’s crew chief with him or bring Chandler Smith’s entire team up to the Cup Series with him.
This may be a long shot, but what about Martin’s brother Ryan? The number and sponsorship would remain the same and Ryan would finally get his chance to shine in top tier equipment!
I agree. It’d keep a Truex in the top tier series after all. Why not Ryan?
Ryan be lucky just to get the xfintiy car full time
That isn’t very realistic
im sure its probably money holding back Ryan, or he would be full time. Wish he would get his shot full time in JGR equipment.
No….there are far better options than Ryan. We shouldn’t just give him a ride because he’s a brother. If that’s how you have to start your sales pitch….
I honestly saw this coming. In radioactive at COTA and Sonoma, you can hear the frustrations he was going through. COTA, he was like “Tired of this (Expletive), Find a new driver!!” Then just this past weekend at Sonoma, after James Small ran him out of gas and told Truex to start it up, he was like “I am James, Jesus!!”
But honestly, I hope Truex gets at least 1-2 more wins this season before he hangs it up.
I love Truex but he’s always bitching about something to crew chief to pit crew. Some are warranted but some definitely not
Yeah but if we were going off of radioactive Ryan Blaney would have quit 3 years ago. Some guys are just that way and unless you have a crew chief that knows how to work with that or a spotter you just ruin a good driver.
MTJ retiring? Now I am feeling old considering I can remember him subbing for injured junebug in 2004
I think Truex is really underrated. Imagine if he was with jgr his whole career. I believe he could’ve end up with 50-60 wins in total instead of 34
From 2016-2022, Truex outperformed Kyle Busch in the same equipment. 100% could’ve gone down as potentially a top 10 all time driver had he been with Gibbs his entire career.
@@fallenfetusTrue, but then again if it wasn’t for Dale Jr, we probably wouldn’t have heard about MTJ in the first place
34 is nothing to sneeze at either.
If he is retiring, he can look back with pride at his career. Prior to joining JGR, he’d been with underfunded or dying teams for most of his career, there was a 6 year gap between his first and second wins, but his then girlfriend suffering from and overcoming cancer seemed to ignite his determination to persevere, build teams up and win the ultimate prize, a championship.
His 4th win of his Cup Series career, the 2016 Coca-Cola 600, was for me his most impressive win. Yes, it wasn’t the most enthralling spectacle to watch, but it was a masterpiece of nailing the setup and driving flawlessly through the ever changing conditions from day into night, leading 588/600 miles, perfection!
Then, one year later, he achieved what few series champions have done, win it in a way that statistics show that he was unquestionably the best driver all season, not only winning races, but being consistently right there over the course of the year. Kyle Larson did something similar in 2021
Ya these are stats that any driver would be proud of especially for a late bloomer like MTJ
Let’s face it. MTJ hasn’t been the same since after 2019 when Cole Pearn retired. Him and James Small just haven’t had that same magic he and Pearn had. Never been an MTJ fan but he’s one of the few drivers who can say he was elite well into his 40s along with Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin
Kurt busch too
I’ve been a truex fan since the old furniture row days. To see him go through all the adversity he faced, and to go from a top 10 driver, to a consistently winning driver, to a YEARLY CHAMPIONSHIP THREAT was truly awesome and meant a ton to me as a fan. I’m gonna miss this dude so much, it really sucks to see him go. Truly on of the best
As a Truex fan, I knew this was coming, but I still was not ready for this at all. I’m devastated about the news but I’m proud of Martin of how much he has succeeded throughout his career.
Treux went from being one of my favorite underdogs to a NASCAR Cup champion and one of the few drivers outside of Hendrick Motorsports I cheer for to win. What a career!
Man I remember seeing MTJ win at Sonoma Last year in 23. I will always miss him from the Nascar grid
I strongly feel if James Small wasn’t his crew chief, Truex wouldn’t be retiring this year. Small has killed Truex’s motivation, and I think Truex being as angry as he’s been is because he knows he’s still a good driver, but everyone else around him has been failing him, so why not cut his losses at this point?
I think he would have had way more wins with a different crew chief. You can hear from the team radio that they don’t really get along.
From running MTJ out of gas at Sonoma to the 4 tire call when the rest of the leaders took 2 a few weeks back, dropping him almost 11 spots back when he was the leader and had a chance to win. James Smalls has made a lot of bad calls.
I agree Small killed his desire to race. Small is a terrible crew chief. When he put used tires on his car last year and didn’t tell Teuex that right there told me all I needed to know about the kind of person Small is.
@@willp8003 I remember hearing that from the Radioactive segment when Smalls said he didn’t think Truex needed to know. There might be some things crew chiefs don’t tell their drivers, but tire condition is definitely not on that list.
As a South Jersey guy who grew up next to where he left to go fishing – you will be missed.
Who ever gets the 19 ride they better hope for another crew chief.
This is a heartbreak since Martin Truex Jr will retire, but he became my favorite driver since 2021, and I’ll see him in his last race at the 2024 Championship Weekend in Phoenix.