NASCAR.com staff report

NASCAR Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. announced Friday that he plans to retire from full-time competition at the conclusion of the 2024 season.

Truex, the 2017 title winner and a four-time Dover Motor Speedwaty champion, 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.

A storybook 2017 season for Truex – his 12th full-time year at the sport’s highest level – launched him into the echelon of the NASCAR elite and changed his career forever. Truex and crew chief Cole Pearn compiled a career-best eight victories and 26 top 10s that season, along with a dazzling 9.4 average finish en route to the title.

It was the first Cup Series championship for Truex, a Mayetta, N.J., native, 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.

Truex 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 the Monster Mile, his home track. 

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.