Following a disappointing 28th place finish in the Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Furniture Row Racing and Martin Truex Jr. find themselves once again outside the top five in the NASCAR Sprint Cup driver standings.
Truex ran Saturday’s race just about where he started, dropping two places from his 26th place starting position. It was a difficult starting position, but after his strong performance at Michigan the week prior – which saw him jump from No. 22 to a top-three finish – Truex had to again walk away disappointed.
After a strong start to the season and spending much of the early part of the year in third place in the Cup standings, Furniture Row Racing has experienced seesaw results since June. Following last week’s race, Truex spoke with FOX Sports, saying his team is close – but not where they want to be quite yet.
“We’ve had some tough like the last five or six weeks, but we’ve had some tough luck. If luck doesn’t go bad for us, we’re going to be right there. I think we can get all the way to Homestead, and that’s what our goal is right now.”
It’s a goal that has seemed almost unattainable for the single-car outfit based in Denver up until this season. In its ten years of Sprint Cup racing leading up to 2015, Furniture Row’s best season was a 10th place finish in 2013 with Kurt Bush at the wheel. Truex Jr. replaced Bush in 2014 and earned the team only its second-ever Sprint Cup win earlier this year.
Truex has secured a place for Furniture Row in the Chase for the Cup, but knows he’ll need more consistency from his team and his cars if they hope to compete all the way until the season’s final race. As he told FOX Sports: “We’ve got cars capable of winning and we’ve got a team capable of winning. Those top 10s are great, but we’re looking at bigger and better things.”