The making of Martin Truex Jr.
Martin Truex Jr. smiles when he sees the snapshot in time. The teenaged version of himself in the photo is sporting a bowl haircut, watching over the garage area at New Jersey's famed Wall Stadium in a nondescript, sponsor-free red racing suit.
It's a long way – roughly 25 years – to take the leap from those fading newspaper clippings to where Truex is now, a lion in NASCAR's top division with a uniform patch that recognizes his accomplishments as a Cup Series champion. His stock-car career is now in its sunset years, but the path that brought him here was shaped by those long-ago lessons and memories.
"It just all happened so fast when I look back on it," Truex says. "Amazing how it all worked out."
From the bowl cut to the early 2000s soul patch to the graying of his salt-and-pepper temples, Truex heads to this Sunday's season-ending race at Phoenix Raceway (3 p.m. ET, NBC, Peacock, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) to bring his full-time racing career to a close. He has his knack for handling a car at high speed to thank, but he also owes some gratitude to his persistence.
At 10 years old, Truex saw a friend racing go-karts at the New Egypt Speedway near his home. "I'm like, 'I gotta go do this.'" He begged his father for his own kart, hoping to follow in the family's tradition of racing in the Garden State and beyond. Martin Truex Sr. relented a year later, and the long-shot journey to a Hall of Fame career was on course.
Three crucial stops along the way brought the younger Truex to NASCAR's big leagues. Wall Stadium's rough-and-tumble oval in the family's home state became the first proving ground. The former NASCAR Busch North Series became the next natural extension of that foundation, exposing him to a tight-knit group of hard-nosed racers. Success there brought him to what's now known as the Xfinity Series and a free-wheeling organization with Dale Earnhardt Jr. as its guiding force.
At the heart of it all were his family roots and an unwavering belief in doing things the right way.
WALL STADIUM, THE EARLY YEARS
Martin Truex Jr.'s Modified career was just five races old when he found out just how rough Wall Stadium could be.
A tangle on the high-banked short track had left his car on a wrecker's hook, an early setback in those formative days. Truex was still sitting in the cockpit behind the tow truck when rival Ronnie Mullen came charging over and punched him in the face.
"He tried. He didn't really get me," Truex said, adding, "I don't even remember exactly what that was about."
Other details were less fuzzy. "I remember I had a helmet on. It was just an altercation, but there were some guys back then that weren't scared to go fight, you know what I mean? And I was maybe 19, I'm like, 'What the hell's going on?' Just racing."
Yet it was that brand of racing at Wall Stadium that gave Truex an accelerated learning curve. The steep layout with 30-degree banks and a tight racing groove would be a challenge for any series, but the lightweight, ground-pounding Modified cars made the going that much more difficult.
Wall is a place where NASCAR Hall of Famer Ray Evernham called home in his driving days, years before he connected with team owner Rick Hendrick to become a championship-winning crew chief with a young hotshot named Jeff Gordon. Asked to describe Wall Stadium for someone who's never been, the native of Hazlet Township a half-hour away says, "Ah, wow."
"Take Bristol, right, and take it from a half-mile to a third of a mile and put faster cars on the track. It's crazy," Evernham says, noting the relative lack of restrictions on Modified cars back then. "Like I said, it's a smaller Bristol. It's paved, but not concrete, and the modifieds are just wicked fast. ... It was like bumper to bumper at 120 miles an hour, all around this little bullring. You had to be sharp, and you raced against a lot of tough guys -- tough guys that had lots of experience, and guys that knew how to operate around that race track, and if you messed with them, you ended up in the infield."
Just three races after his initiation into Wall's rougher edges, Truex was a small-block modified winner, claiming his first checkered flag on Aug. 31, 1998. Slightly more than a year later, he joined his father as a winner of the track's prestigious Turkey Derby classic, becoming the wintertime event's youngest champ at just 19.
The moment became a real-life corollary to childhood days spent sitting in his father's race cars, driving imaginary races and yearning for speed. The daydreams were bolstered by hard work. After graduating from Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin, he opted against a potentially more lucrative role with his family's seafood business to pursue his racing aspirations.
"He wants to know everything about it," the elder Truex told the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press before the 2000 season, describing how involved his son was in the shop, from selecting springs and shocks to assembly and fabrication. "This ain't just a rich daddy giving his kids toys, I can tell you that right now," said Truex Sr., who dialed back his racing schedule as his son's profile grew. "Because if he wasn't committed to it, I wouldn't be doing it."
Those principles helped to shape his approach to racing then and now, on the track and off it.
"I would say just the work ethic and what goes on behind the scenes is most important, and then driving with respect and racing clean. That was something that he always did," Truex Jr. says. "I don't know if that's where I learned it from, but it was like he would get mad at me when I would bend stuff up. He's like, 'You've got to fix it.' I can just remember, if I'd do something stupid and tear the nose up on a car or whatever, he'd be like, 'Look what you've got to do Monday.' So I guess it was just that. It was the respect and the work ethic."
Evernham's knowledge of the Truex family's dedication to the sport goes back decades. He raced against both father and son, fondly remembering Martin Jr. playing in the yard when he paid his father a visit, but also recalling the Truexes as a family of devoted fishermen and clammers, a business that fueled their racing passions.
"People go 'well, you know, they got good rides and everything,' but you've still got to produce. You get a good ride, you've still got to produce and he really did well," Evernham says. "I think early in his career, a lot of people were watching the things he was doing and going, 'Damn. That kid, there's something special about him,' because he would just jump into stuff at an early age, and he did really well against some of the veteran modified guys, and I'm going to tell you as a kid, those veteran modified guys could be tough, right? We're talking about New Jersey, New York here."
The younger Truex's stay at Wall Stadium was relatively brief, and Evernham was among those who had recommended to the family-owned team that he was ready for his career's next stage. Once the 2000 season arrived, Martin Truex Jr. was headed toward the Busch North Series, flying his father's No. 56.
Conventional wisdom holds that Truex will likely join Evernham in the NASCAR Hall of Fame one day, and the two will continue to share Wall Stadium as a common bond. The third-mile track may have been just a brief window of time in Truex's early racing roots, but Evernham says the connection is still a source of Garden State pride.
"What he's done for New Jersey racing and heck, I feel like there's a lot of the guys up there in Busch North and the Modifieds up north, we're all kind of the same group, and you're proud. You're proud because to see somebody like that go and have that success, you take a piece of everybody else with you," Evernham says. "All of the guys that wanted to go and couldn't, they've got a good story about you or they raced with you. You take all those people with you. Even when I left Wall Stadium and came down here, I always tried to mention them in articles, and Martin does the same thing because you are representing the people that kind of pushed you along, and all those experiences and things that made you who you are.
"You look at what he gave back to the sport and gave back to the community, he's done a good job. I hate to see him stop, so I hope he doesn't stop completely, but he's earned the right to go fishing if he wants to."
THE GREAT BUSCH NORTH
Andy Santerre says he knew Martin Truex Jr.'s pedigree when he arrived in the Busch North Series. He'd raced against his father through the 1990s, then ventured south to give what's now known as the Xfinity Series a go. When he returned, the Maine native began an epic run of four consecutive North Series championships, but there was a new member of the Truex family to contend with.
"He was as good as ever came out of New England, that's for sure," Santerre says now, recollecting how he knew a challenge was coming whenever the Truex family-owned team rolled into any track. He got a firsthand and up-close sense of just how good during one of their last on-track showdowns, at one of the regional tour's biggest races in front of a full Cup Series garage.
Truex Jr. led 108 of 125 laps from the pole in the summer of 2003 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, but that stat line belies the difficulties he faced. For the majority of the last 40 laps, Santerre's No. 6 Chevrolet rode close to Truex's back deck as he feinted high and low in an effort to get around.
"I threw everything but the kitchen sink at him," Santerre says now. "I moved my bumper out high to try to get him to look in his mirror. The point I'm trying to make is, I was the veteran and I had a lot of tricks up my sleeve, and I pulled them all out and I couldn't rattle him at all. I mean, I couldn't make him look back in his mirror."
Truex remembers the pressure being constant. "If he'd ever gotten in front of me, it was over," he says. "He was way faster. So just trying to look out the windshield and not out the mirror was tough, especially with a guy like that with all he had done. That was after he'd already been down south and won a couple races, and he was just super good, super smart. Great, great driver."
What Santerre didn't discover until later was how animated Truex had been over his team's radio communications, fretting about being passed and letting one of the circuit's biggest prizes slip away. That led to some good-natured ribbing from Truex's crew in Victory Lane, but Santerre had a greater takeaway. He remembers telling the young driver later, "Dude, you're gonna make it."
"We poked at him after we found out, but he did a hell of a job. I mean, that's where I knew. I knew he was good and I'd raced with him some, but that was where I knew that he had something a little more than most of us had to go down there with," Santerre said, hinting at Truex's eventual move south. "Obviously, it showed. I mean, he went down there and was competitive right off the bat, never looked back, and he's always been a factor, even in the Cup Series. But that was the first time I had seen it with my own eyes how good he really was."
Truex left a brief but lasting impression on the former Busch North Series, and his New Hampshire triumph was the last of his five wins on the regional circuit. The northeast-based tour began in the late 1970s and eventually changed its name to the Busch East Series as it expanded its reach, evolving into what is the ARCA Menards Series East today.
That earlier history is what Truex grew up in, watching his dad travel across the northeast to places like Lee USA Speedway, Oxford Plains and Stafford Springs. The star drivers he competed against became the younger Truex's racing heroes. When he suited up and made his first North Series start in 2000, those names loomed large.
"I remember, when I first went there, I was like, 'Oh my God, like I can't believe I'm getting to do this. How am I going to beat them? How am I ever going to beat these guys, because they've been doing it so long. They're so good at it,' " Truex said. "So it all kind of happened quick for me, and luckily we were able to have success pretty quickly, because it was, for me, it was just like Mount Everest sitting in front of me. Like, 'Holy crap. You're throwing me to the wolves here, Dad.' But we figured it out pretty quickly, which is awesome."
The environment that Truex came into was a welcoming one, even if New Jersey might not exactly be considered part of the New England region. His father had earned a degree of respect from his time in Busch North, and his peers saw early on that his son was cut from the same fabric.
"I think he was still considered as a New England guy," says Kelly Moore, the Busch North Series' all-time wins leader (27) and its 1995 champion. "I mean, he cut his teeth, he did it right, he came from the bottom up. He didn't walk in with a helmet bag. I mean, he raced the Wall Stadiums, the short tracks and the Saturday night stuff, the beat-'em-up and go home and fix them yourself type of racing, and that's kind of where I came from, too."
It was that close-knit community that helped shape Truex's approach. Many of the teams were family-owned with modest sponsorships and budgets, and though the on-track competition was frequently fierce, long-running grudges tended not to last.
"I don't know how to explain it," said Mike Olsen, a two-time Busch North champ (2001, 2006). "Back then, it was just a lot of respect between the racers. Most of us in that series worked on our own equipment. ... Back then it was like a big family, and we all celebrated with each other after the races, whoever won or didn't. I mean, very seldom was there hard feelings, and if there was, we took care of it pretty quick, and the next week, you were over it and moving on."
Olsen had a similar moment to Santerre's in Truex's second Busch North season. Olsen led early in July 2001 at Thompson Speedway, and Truex eventually took control and drove to his first victory of the year, but not without some adversity and pressure down the stretch.
"It came down to the end and I found out toward the end of the race that his shifter had broke," Olsen recalled in a story he can laugh about now. "The handle had broken off, so he was stuck in fourth gear is what I was told. I'm like, 'Oh jeez, I ought to be able to get him here, right?' We had a couple of late restarts, and I thought for sure with him stuck in fourth gear, I was going to be able to get it and I didn't. I had to finish second to him, and I remember, 'Jeez, I don't know how he did that.'
"Yeah, he beat me, and I think he was stuck in high gear and had no way to shift. So I'm thinking to myself all the way home, I'm like, 'how the heck did he do that?'"
By the time of his last season in Busch North, Truex had already started exploring the Xfinity Series and a move up the NASCAR ladder. That buzz about the young driver's arrival quickly yielded success, which his North Series brethren cheered on as a source of pride. It was one of their own getting a shot at the show and making the most of it.
Much like how he left Wall Stadium, Truex took a piece of the Busch North Series with him on his way to NASCAR's majors.
"He's very grounded, if you would," Moore says. "He just still strikes me as the person that he doesn't forget where he came from, for sure. I don't go to the NASCAR race tracks much anymore, but if I do and I see him, he'll take the time to talk to me. It's not like he's got a lot of time, because like all those drivers, they're pulled and tugged in every direction -- from practice to interviews to appearances. I know that, so for him to take the time, he's a very well-grounded kid."
As Truex's full-time career winds down, he still talks about Moore, Olsen, Santerre and the rest of the Busch North fraternity in reverential tones. The feeling is mutual among the drivers who were once his heroes and eventually became his peers, those who recognize the legacy he leaves on their racing community.
"They still talk about it up here, so he's got a huge fan base in New England, and I think not only because he's a great driver, but I think it's because he's a great human being," says Santerre, who will be inducted into the Maine Racing Hall of Fame on Saturday. "That makes a huge difference, because after all these races and stuff are over, we've got to continue as people, and as his retirement comes on and he puts the racing in the past, he's got a lot to be proud of. He's going to have fans the rest of his life because even myself, I didn't make it to the level he has, and I go places and I haven't raced for 20 years, and people still know who I am. So people that follow racing, I'll tell you, they're dedicated fans, for sure. And I think Martin probably has as many as anybody in the Cup Series right now."
THE JUNIORS FORM A BOND
There was something about Chance 2 Motorsports that made Martin Truex Jr. feel at ease. The organization co-owned by Teresa Earnhardt and Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the first established team he'd driven for in the Busch Grand National -- now Xfinity -- Series, and it was there that he found young, kindred spirits with an appetite for winning and enjoying the good times that came with it.
"Martin definitely was shy, but when he came down here, he fit right in with the guys," said Kevin "Bono" Manion, crew chief for his two Xfinity Series championship campaigns. "We did a lot of things together and probably we raced hard and partied harder, I think, but that was just part of it then."
The comfort level and camaraderie, however, wasn't enough to stave off the natural first-night jitters when the team arrived at Richmond Raceway for their first race together on May 2, 2003. "I was super intimidated with the whole situation," Truex can admit now. He had tested earlier at Richmond with his family-run team when Earnhardt Jr. asked him to hop in and shake down his own car. His enthusiastic "yes" was tempered by seeing a crew led by Tony Eury Sr. and Jr., wearing their Budweiser No. 8 uniforms fine-tuning on the car, "and I'm like, 'You want me to get in that? Are you crazy?' That's just kind of how it was, though. They were just so laid-back."
The first showing was a memorable one. Truex had threaded his No. 81 Chevy through a night full of carnage, leading 11 laps as he found his way into contention late. He was running fourth when his transmission failed as he worked his way through the gears on a restart, ending his night 44 laps short of the finish.
"I was like, 'All right, that's it. I'm done. I'll never get another chance, you know?' I was just devastated," Truex recalled. "And Dale comes and grabs me by the neck, and he's like, 'Man, you could have won that race. That was awesome!' And I'm just like, 'Man, leave me alone. I broke the transmission.' And just from that point on, they were like, 'We got you. You're our guy. You're awesome.' From there, we just went."
Longtime engine builder Richie Gilmore, who later became the competition director at Dale Earnhardt Inc., had recommended Earnhardt Jr. look at Truex, noting his rapid rise through the Busch North ranks. The Richmond debut was the first of six races for Truex in Chance 2's first year of operation as the organization prepped for a full-season run in 2004.
"It was just a really fun program that we really could do about anything we wanted," Earnhardt said. "We had no real limitations in terms of partners or whatever, it was just whoever we wanted to drive the car. So we did some fun stuff, but it was really easy to go, 'All right, yeah, let's give this guy a shot.'"
Taking a flier on the young New Jersey standout ended up being a launching pad for both Truex's career and Earnhardt's foray into team ownership. Racing against fields loaded with more experienced Cup Series regulars, Truex won six times to secure the Xfinity championship in his rookie year, then backed it up with another six-win campaign for a sophomore-season repeat that earmarked him for Cup.
The competition may have been intense, but the atmosphere stayed loose throughout.
"It was just, we just worked," Manion says. "We worked extremely hard. That was before overtime hours and HR departments and all of that, and it was just fun. Loud radio. It was a bunch of kids doing exactly what they were supposed to do, and with ... I hate to say the word 'no supervision,' but it was working for Dale Jr., right? And as long it was neat and cool, it was really fun when we would go to Daytona and test the two cars, we painted the numbers on with some flames and etched the windows with flames, and the gear shifter knob had eyes that lit up with a skull."
Even the impromptu way the team nicknamed its cars was unorthodox. A song came on the radio that reminded the crew of someone? Car name. Ordering from a takeout place for late-night eats? Car name.
"We just did all kinds of neat stuff, you know, and fun stuff, but we were very successful," Manion said. "Hard work, luck, skill ... all of that mixed together and it just worked, and it just happened, and it was, I hate to use the word 'magical.' It was just times of your life you will never, ever forget."
Those times forged bonds that lasted beyond the disbanding of Chance 2 and DEI, well into each driver's golden years. The two have a shared sponsorship through Bass Pro Shops that celebrates their common interests in outdoorsy life, something Earnhardt hopes to savor more of as Truex's driving duties wane -- if he can only get him on the phone.
"So he's a terrible communicator, but every time I'm around him, he's a great friend," Earnhardt says. "I really enjoy being around him. We're talking about trying to figure out how to get together this year to hunt, and we've got a place together that we've had for several years. I don't ever, ever hear from him, but when I'm around him, man, he's just such a great guy and a lot of fun to be around, and we have such a long history. There's so much trust built up, and we can kind of bounce anything off each other. But I kind of like where he's at in his life."
Truex's legacy will continue beyond Sunday's season-ending race at Phoenix, where his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota will sport a paint scheme that honors his first Cup Series start with Dale Earnhardt Inc., back in 2004. The 44-year-old veteran plans to compete in select races next season, with a handshake deal lined up for a Daytona 500 bid in 2025, and his brother, Ryan, will aim to keep the Truex name on the grid.
"He means a lot to the sport, right?" Manion says. "Definitely in my book, a future Hall of Famer, and I think that's no question there. Just a young kid out of New Jersey who got an opportunity, made the most of it and was quiet along the way. Humble, quiet, never really got upset, never really showed a whole lot of emotion. Like his dad was helping him, I think Martin's still around and still racing to try to help his brother ... to get Ryan another good 10 years of racing and a good full-time ride. So, just a helpful person that likes racing, likes his remote-control boats, and likes his home time and his Captain Morgan. I think he'll be remembered well, but as really just a quiet person that didn't like to make controversy."
Manion says he always counted on Truex getting another opportunity after his first Chance 2 race went south. What it led to was a career that spanned 19 full Cup Series seasons, nearly 700 starts, 34 wins and a memorable championship march in 2017.
The opening-night dejection from Richmond didn't last, but remnants and cherished memories remain.
"I have the hood off of that car in my garage," Earnhardt says, "and so that ought to tell you what I think about Truex."