Hopefully Martin Truex Jr. enjoyed having a teammate for one whole season …
Furniture Row Racing already does things differently than most other NASCAR teams. Having your headquarters out in Colorado while most everyone else is in North Carolina is a good start.
It also tried fielding a championship-caliber team with just a single car until this season, when it added the No. 77 Toyota driven by Erik Jones. Alas, it’s back to one car again for 2018, barring some kind of 11th hour miracle.
NBC Sports reports that Furniture Row has sold the charter it used for the 77 in 2017, though interestingly the company did not reveal with whom it did the deal. That backs up team owner Barney Visser’s comments from earlier this week, when he said he expected not to run the 77 next season while hoping it could someday return.
Sponsor 5-hour Energy, which can’t move to another organization since it is grandfathered in with FRR as a competitor to series sponsor Monster Energy, will shift over to Truex’s 78 in 2018.
Both Visser and team president Joe Garone have mentioned before that they were simply caught short by Joe Gibbs Racing promoting Jones for 2018, expecting they might have him around for one more season. The accelerated timetable simply didn’t work out for Furniture Row, though both men have also held out hope that they can bring the second car back down the road.
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Selling the 77’s charter makes that a tad more difficult, but if we’ve learned anything about the charter system so far, it’s that where there’s a will, there’s a way. If, say, Furniture Row wants to bring the 77 back in 2019, it should be able to come up with a charter without too much difficulty.
And while Truex will be just fine as a solo act, the real shame of the 77 car going away is that it would have been a prime gig for currently ride-less drivers like Matt Kenseth, Kasey Kahne or even Danica Patrick. The Toyotas have been extremely fast almost all season, with Furniture Row leading the way with thanks to regular season champ Truex.
So long, 77. We hardly knew ye, but it was fun while it lasted.