It’s a bad day to be a fish.
Surrounded by literally everyone from Joe Gibbs Racing and longtime supporter Johnny Morris of Bass Pro Shops, Martin Truex Jr. confirmed that this would be the final full-time season of his NASCAR Cup Series career.
With 20 more races left to go this season, Truex made the announcement sitting on one Cup Series championship (2017) and 34 victories at the highest level over 673 starts across two decades of competition.
Truex has wrestled with this decision for the past three years. At 43 years old, he is still incredibly competitive but has also pondered what life looks like on the other side of it the rigorous routine of racing in the NASCAR Cup Series.
“Honestly, I’ve thought about it a lot the past few seasons and just waited for that feeling in my mind to be positive, like ‘this is okay, I’m good, I want to do something else.’ Yeah, something just felt different this year for me. I felt like it was time to slow down and do something else. It’s been a great ride.”
Truex, who has yet to win this season but currently sits fifth in the championship standings, says the decision wasn’t made for competition reasons. It just came down to the life he wanted to live approaching his mid-40s and after decades chasing this career.
“I’ve never missed a race in 21 years,” Truex said. “I never missed a practice. I’ve never been late for anything. I’ve never missed an appearance.
“I mean, you live your life by a schedule that somebody makes for you and it’s just time for me to make my own schedule. It’s really as simple as that. What it really boils down to me is that I want to go and do the things I want to do and I don’t want anyone to tell me when I can and when I can’t do those things.”
Joe Gibbs, who brought Truex over to his team in 2019, has long fought to retain his driver each time this came up. Over the past two years, he’s said publicly what he has told Truex, that the driver is in the prime of his career, capable of winning races and championships and making a lot of money to do it.
Gibbs wanted to maintain the status quo for another year, even if it was on another patchwork one year agreement.
“Coach has been awesome helping me work through it,” Truex said. “He would always make me a list of pros and cons and his list of pros was always longer than mine.”
Pros, as is coming back for another year.
“I think the last time I had nine pluses and two minuses,” Gibbs said with a laugh.
Each of his current teammates, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Ty Gibbs, attended the press conference in support of Truex as were several crew members and engineers — everyone who wasn’t on car duty at that exact moment.
It’s a testament to the respect everyone at Gibbs has for Truex and the driver did not want to let them down by leaving.
“I’ve known for a few weeks, we’ve known for a few weeks (and) I was leaning that way most of the season,” Truex said. “I was leaning that direction, but I wasn’t totally sure. So, just took a while to think about it all. It’s a big decision. It affects not just me (but) a lot of people and again that’s the toughest part. You don’t want to let people down.”
But this is going to be a sort of soft retirement because Truex says he is remaining with the team next year and beyond as a team ambassador and expects to race in 2025, even at the Cup Series level.
After all, he still doesn’t have a Daytona 500 victory.
“I’d be open to it, yeah,” he said.
JGR also has a successful Xfinity Series program and he expects to run some of those races as well just to discharge some of those competitive urges.
“We’re working on that,” Gibbs said very excited.
Truex also bought a really big deep sea fishing boat last summer and everyone in the sport knew it was a matter of time before he wanted to spend days and weeks at a time doing that over a summer without the conflict of a Cup Series obligation.
“Yeah, it’s as simple as just not having a crazy schedule where 40 weekends I’m at a race so that’s part of it,” Truex said. “I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to be doing yet aside from the fun stuff I like to do away from the race track.
“Hunting, fishing, hanging out with friends. Everyone in my family that’s ever gotten married, I missed their wedding. You know what I mean? You don’t have a life. You’re married to racing. That’s all you do Monday to Sunday. That’s all you do. It’s just going to be interesting to just lead kind of a normal life for while and see what that’s like. It’s been – I’ve never done that.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.