CHARLOTTE — Martin Truex Jr. confirmed Wednesday that he will seek to compete in next year’s Daytona 500 and will have former crew chief Cole Pearn running the pits.
Truex has said his car number will be either 78 or 56. He won the 2017 Cup championship with the number 78. He has used the number 56 throughout his career and calls it “my number.”
This season marks Truex’s 19th full-time season in Cup. The 44-year-old has 34 series victories but has never won the Daytona 500. He finished second to Denny Hamlin in 2016 by 0.010 seconds, the closest finish in Daytona 500 history.
Truex said during the NASCAR Cup Playoffs media day that a deal is “almost done” for him to drive the 2025 Daytona 500.
Regarding the car, Hamlin, co-owner of 23XI Racing, said Wednesday: “23XI and (Joe Gibbs Racing) are looking at the different options and determining what the best solution is. Certainly having Martin in the 500 is going to be exciting.”
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Truex said he plans to race a few races next year, but enjoys not having to be at the track every weekend.
“I still love racing,” he said. “I still love driving cars. I’m just ready to not travel 40 weekends a year. That’s the only thing.”
The partnership with Pearn will reunite a successful duo. With Pearn as his crew chief, Truex won 24 races and one championship between 2015 and 2019. Pearn left the sport after the 2019 season.
Pearn has made brief appearances in the sport since. He was a spotter for Truex during the 2021 playoff race at the Charlotte Roval. Pearn served one race as an engineer for Truex’s team in 2022 at Sonoma.
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Truex will enter this year’s playoffs ranked 15th out of 16 drivers. He has finished 24th or worse in nine of the last 12 regular-season races.
Truex’s playoff hopes were derailed when he crashed in the early laps of last weekend’s Southern 500. He was left behind by just six points.
“I’d like to be the guy in the lead with the most points, right?” said Truex, who has not won any of his last 42 races. “That’s the best spot, so I don’t think we’re in an ideal situation by any means.”
“I think we have a good opportunity in front of us. They’re a great team and we’ve been really fast lately. We just have to execute, correct a lot of mistakes, and a lot of that is on my side as well. We know what we have to do, we’ve done it before and we’re excited to get going.”
