"As unlucky as I got at Richmond, I got just as lucky when this deal turned up," Truex Jr. said Friday.

 The loss of sponsorship forced MWR to scale back to two full-time Sprint Cup teams, accelerating Truex’s search for a full-time job. The move means he will take over the seat left by a former series champion, driving for a team coming off its most successful season.

“Michael Waltrip Racing congratulates Martin on his announcement today," the team said in a release. "We are very happy to see him in a competitive ride next year and appreciate the professionalism everyone showed throughout this entire process.” 

Busch was introduced Aug. 27 as a fourth driver for Stewart-Haas Racing beginning in 2014. Even with his impending departure, Busch helped power Furniture Row’s No. 78 Chevrolet into its first appearance in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup postseason this year.

Furniture Row Racing’s headquarters in Denver, Colo., make it one of the few stock-car operations outside of the Charlotte, N.C.-area hub. Despite the distance, team owner Barney Visser — who started his furniture empire from a modest pillow business in the 1970s — has seen his team benefit from a technical alliance with established Chevy team Richard Childress Racing.
 
The partnership, which began in 2010, treats Furniture Row as a virtual fourth car in the Childress camp. Team officials for both sides announced an extension of their alliance on Sept. 12.
 
Furniture Row Racing debuted in 2005 and struggled in its earliest years before achieving its first taste of success with Regan Smith, who piloted the team’s No. 78 to its first victory in the 2011 Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Visser reached an agreement with Busch late in 2012, replacing Smith for the final six races of the year.
 
After closing the 2012 season with three consecutive top-10 finishes, Busch and the underdog outfit have thrived this year with the team’s first Coors Light Pole Award since 2008 and 10 top-five finishes. The team had achieved just three top-fives in 193 career starts before Busch’s arrival.
 
Busch finished eighth in the regular-season Sprint Cup standings, guaranteeing a spot in the 10-race Chase playoffs this season. It also guaranteed that Visser’s organization will enjoy its best-ever finish in the points standings. Furniture Row’s previous best finish in the Sprint Cup team owner standings was 24th place, achieved last season.
 
For Truex, his stay in this season’s Chase lasted just two days. NASCAR officials removed him from the playoffs and replaced him with Ryan Newman after the Waltrip team was ruled to have manipulated the results of the Sept. 7 race at Richmond.
 
NASCAR also fined the organization $300,000, stripped all three Cup teams 50 championship points, suspended general manager Ty Norris indefinitely and placed all three crew chiefs on probation.
 
NAPA, saying that the company "believes in fair play," announced Sept. 19 that it would terminate its partnership at the end of the season, ending its contract as primary sponsor for Truex’s No. 56 Toyota two years early. NAPA had been a sponsor of Waltrip’s during both his driving and team owner career since 2001.
 
Truex had been with Michael Waltrip Racing since the start of 2010, making the Chase last season for the first time since 2007. After NAPA’s announced departure left a bleak outlook for a third MWR car in 2014, Waltrip said that Truex was free to explore his options.
 
"If he came to me tomorrow and said ‘I’ve got a deal to go do something,’ then obviously I would not hold him back," Waltrip said Sept. 20 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. "His support and loyalty to our organization has been amazing. He drove some kind of crappy cars when he first got to our shop. We were able to build those cars and make them faster. He’s become a race-winning Chase guy. I owe him a lot."

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"Well, of course we’re in it. Until we’re mathematically out of it, we’re in it," Gordon said after notching his first victory of the season last weekend at Martinsville Speedway, a place he’s won at eight times, but not since 2005 before Sunday’s triumph.

"This was certainly a big moment, big day for us, and like I said, we tested at Texas. I’m excited about Texas. I think it’s a great track for us, but it’s pretty darned great for both those guys, as well. They performed very, very well again today. It’s going to be tough to catch them."

Gordon made at least a dent with his Martinsville victory, rising from 35 points back in fifth place to a 27-point deficit in third. Still, he sees the potential for taking a bigger swipe at the gap in Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 (3 p.m. ET, ESPN), the eighth of 10 races in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup postseason. 

"There’s no better time to win races than right now, and to be able to carry that momentum ‑‑ I’m so proud to be third in the points," Gordon said. "We all want to win the championship, but I mean, from where we started early in the season, heck, where we started in this Chase, to be third in points right now, I’m very proud of that. We can’t get the cart ahead of the horse; we’ve got to appreciate that but also take advantage of this momentum and confidence that we do have, and I can’t wait to get to Texas." 

Momentum and confidence? Not bad for a 42-year-old veteran who wasn’t in the Chase from the get-go. Gordon was added to create a 13-driver field after the results of the regular-season finale were manipulated, originally leaving him as one of the odd men out at Richmond.

Whether the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team’s postseason inclusion merits an asterisk has been the subject of debate, but Gordon has simply gone about the business of proving he belongs.

"I mean, I feel like we deserve to be in it," Gordon said. "I don’t like how we got in it, being an added 13th team. You can dispute that all you want, but we’re certainly not going to say no, we won’t take it. We wanted to be in it. We feel like we were in a position to earn our way into it, and I think that this team would have performed like this whether we were in it or not." 

Since then, Gordon has made the most of his second chance, posting top-10 finishes in five of the seven Chase races to move his way up the pecking order. Making extreme headway against the lead pair, however, has been no easy task; even as Gordon was taking the checkered flag Sunday, Kenseth was close behind in second place with Johnson not so far back in fifth. 

Three more races like Sunday would not be enough for Gordon to overcome the deficit, but the team hopes to keep applying pressure to the leaders while employing its own no-pressure approach. 

"I’m hoping to go to Texas and get a little bit closer and then we’ll have this conversation again," said Alan Gustafson, Gordon’s crew chief. "I think the closer we get, really ‑‑ I don’t want to say that we’re playing with house money, but of all the cars that are competing with it, I think we are. For us the best thing we can do is just go out there and try to win and get closer and closer and have a chance at Homestead. That really was my goal going into the Chase. (It’s) still my goal now to go into Homestead with a shot." 

That mission starts with Texas, a track that hasn’t always been kind to Gordon with an average finish of 17.0 and six DNFs in 25 starts. But the lackluster results are balanced by a win in 2009, eight career top-five finishes and a three pole positions at the Fort Worth track. 

Gordon will need more of the latter than the former come Sunday to keep the title race from becoming a two-car breakaway. 

"Let’s be honest. We’re all alive, but right now there’s two that are in it," Gordon said. "Our job is to go to Texas and make it three."

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