From the Ground up - Furniture Row Racing Climbs to the Top of the Ladder

Truex Clinched the Regular Season Championship at Richmond
(Photo-CCK Photography)

A championship organization isn’t built overnight, it’s built over time. Furniture Row Racing is a prime example of that saying and the Denver Colorado-based team proved that this season by earning their first championship in NASCAR’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

With Martin Truex Jr. behind the wheel, the team absolutely dominated the 2017 season. Truex earned eight victories, 19 top-fives, 26 top-10’s, and three poles. While Toyota as a whole struggled during the early part of the season, Truex and his team hit it off winning the second race of the season at Las Vegas.

An overall consistent season led to his first Championship in Cup
(Photo-CCK Photography)

The victory at Las Vegas started a fire under the No. 78 and that fire would continue to burn all the way to Homestead. The best tracks for Truex were without a doubt the mile-and-a-half tracks.

Homestead just happens to be a mile-and-a-half track and the team capped off a strong 2017 season with the victory in the Ford EcoBoost 400 which ultimately gained the championship. 13 years in the Cup Series is a long time to see teams come-and-go but one thing has remained constant through the years is the No. 78 being on track. Furniture Row Racing was truly built from the ground up with the addition of different drivers including Kenny Wallace, Regan Smith, Kurt Busch, and finally Martin Truex Jr.

Truex had already punched his ticket to Homestead at Phoenix
(Photo-CCK Photography)

"Well, it took a long time," said Joe Garone; president of Furniture Row Racing. "Those first several years, obviously I needed better people because I was running the car as a crew chief and the books and everything else, and that's a formula for disaster. But as Barney got his feet wet and started understanding what it was he really wanted out of NASCAR and wanted to do, we were able to make some decisions that were major tipping points in the walk"

If you ask through the garage, many will say Cole Pern is one of the best crew chiefs in NASCAR today.

"When Cole came on board, I believe it was 2010 or so, he came with another group of guys, and that was really the beginning of us surrounding ourselves with the people we needed to be able to have the foundation to be able to do what we did today, and that continues on not just with the people in the shop but with our relationships outside of the shop with -- we could not do this without Toyota and the support that they've given us and Joe Gibbs Racing. The truth is we have a great technical alliance with them, and it takes all of those components besides the great guys in the shop that we have to pull this kind of thing off. (Koelle,2017)