Go ahead and pencil in Martin Truex Jr. for the 2025 Daytona 500.
Despite his impending retirement from full-time NASCAR competition at the end of this season, Truex has said repeatedly that he still wants to race a little bit in 2025.
Immediately, Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin offered him a ride under the 23XI Racing stable and Coach Gibbs wants him in a handful of Xfinity Series races too.
Truex has 34 wins and the 2017 Cup Series championship but never won the Great American Race.
“It’s almost a guarantee that I feel like right now that I’ll probably run the Daytona 500, which not a done deal yet but I feel like it shouldn’t be too hard to finish that up,” Truex said while speaking to good friend Dale Earnhardt Jr. on his podcast this week.
That’s not hard to believe given how much Truex covets the Harley J. Earl trophy but there has been a good amount of skepticism towards his stated Xfinity Series interest.
Most expect Truex to vanish from the sport and spend the rest of his days fishing and hunting.
Truex says he has some things he wants to accomplish, including helping younger brother Ryan solidify his career as well.
“I’ll definitely run a few Xfinity races,” Truex told Earnhardt. “I don’t know if that’s two or if that’s five or six, so we gotta look at the schedule and see where I would like to run. I feel like it would be cool to do a little bit more to get something going for Ryan. You know, if we could split a car for a certain amount of races, maybe even a few Truck races here and there if I could put something together.”
Ryan Truex has two Xfinity Series wins, the past two years at Dover, but has struggled to find funding to race a full season. Having Martin and Ryan share sponsorship is a potential pathway to securing more races for example.
