“There's a chance I don't have a job next year”: Martin Truex Jr. reminisces about the ‘ugly time’ of his career at DEI and MWR

Martin Truex Jr. recently opened up about his tumultuous early career in a conversation with Dale Earnhardt Jr. He reflected on his tenure before joining Joe Gibbs Racing, detailing how he navigated the challenging periods at Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Michael Waltrip Racing.

Truex Jr.'s journey to becoming a NASCAR Cup champion was far from smooth. After graduating to the Cup Series as a two-time Xfinity champion, he joined DEI in 2006. However, the team was on a downward spiral, especially after Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s factious split with the team in 2007.

In a recent episode of Dale Jr. Download, Martin Truex Jr. reflected on his tenure driving the #1 Chevy at DEI. He described the period following the team’s merger to become Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing as an "ugly" time, noting that the overall state of the organization was bad.

"There was actually more than that, you even go back to DEI, and when you [Dale Jr.] left and things start to kind of unravel, we merged with Ganassi. It was the #1 car and the #42 car, that was kind of ugly too. That wasn't much fun and things were going just bad." he told Dale Jr. [at 18:34]

Martin Truex Jr. left the team to join Michael Waltrip Racing in 2010, however, his time at MWR marked the toughest period of his NASCAR career, particularly due to the Spingate scandal at Richmond in 2013. The incident forced his primary sponsor, NAPA, to end ties with the team, putting Truex Jr.'s future in the Cup Series in jeopardy. He described it as the toughest time of his career.

"The NAPA deal there was so late in the year, that was probably the scariest point in time. I remember just thinking like 'There's a chance I don't have a job next year'. We had won a race that year and made the playoffs for a couple of hours at least. That was probably the toughest moment I guess was not knowing and then things kind of came together pretty quickly," Truex Jr. added.

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Martin Truex Jr. reflects on his "storybook" rise to becoming a NASCAR Cup champion

From being on the brink of losing his Cup seat, Martin Truex Jr. experienced a storybook rise to become a championship contender when he joined Furniture Row Racing in 2014. In his conversation with Dale Jr., Truex Jr. revealed that he never anticipated things would turn out as they did when he left Michael Waltrip Racing.

"At that time I'm kind of 'Ok, I'm going to a team that doesn't really have a good track record.' They had won a race, they were running 2013 pretty good with Kurt [Busch]. They were kind of starting to show up at the front occasionally but I didn't see the future going the way it was gonna go," he said [at 19:25]

"I went from not sure I'd have a job to two years later to winning our first race together and the next couple of years were just ridiculous you know storybook."

Martin Truex Jr. won the 2017 NASCAR Cup championship and joined Joe Gibbs Racing in 2019. He is set to retire from full-time competition at the end of the ongoing season.