Livescore
Martin Truex Jr.’s retirement may last exactly zero races.
The former NASCAR champ will attempt to make the Feb. 16 Daytona 500 in a Toyota featuring the logo and colors of Truex’s longtime sponsor, Bass Pro Shops.
It would be with a team making its first Cup Series start (Tricon Garage), with technical support from Truex’s most recent team (Joe Gibbs Racing), along with a pit box manned by his 2017 championship-winning crew chief (Cole Pearn).
EARNHARDT! Dale jR. enters Daytona 500 (as owner) and guess who’s buying the whiskey!
Tricon will come to Daytona as an non-chartered team and therefore need to make the 40-car field through pole qualifying or its 150-mile qualifying race on Feb. 13. Tricon, co-owned by former NASCAR racer David Gilliland, fields five Toyotas in NASCAR’s Truck Series.
Truex, 44, announced his retirement from full-time driving last year and made the 2024 season his 19th and final full Cup Series season. He’d suggested he would like to race a few races in 2025, including the Daytona 500 if the opportunity came about.
Martin Truex Jr. & Cole Pearn won 24 races over 179 starts together.
That puts Cole 24th all-time in wins, yet he was only a crew-chief for five seasons.
He won the 2017 championship & also finished 2nd, 2nd, 4th & 11th in points.
Incredible. pic.twitter.com/DgeyVYkQb1
— Seth Sharp (@SethSharp35) December 9, 2019
Martin Truex has a career bagel at Daytona
Along with that 2017 Cup championship, Truex has 34 career Cup victories, but is 0-for-20 in the Daytona 500 and winless in 39 career Cup races at the World Center of Racing, with just six top-10s.
But oh how close he’s come. Truex was side by side with Denny Hamlin to the finish line in the 2016 Daytona 500 but was lost by the blink of an eye — quite literally. Hamlin’s winning margin was .010, one hundredth of a second.
Two seasons later in the summertime Coke Zero 400, Truex finished second to Erik Jones by a tick over one tenth of a second.
Pearn and Truex won the 2017 Cup championship with Denver-based Furniture Row Racing, which folded after the following year. Pearn joined Truex as a package deal at Joe Gibbs Racing in 2019, but left the pit box after that season and hasn’t returned, instead serving as consultant for the Gibbs team.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR: Martin Truex Jr. retired 2 months ago, returns for Daytona 500
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