NASCAR Leaks: Martin Truex Jr.’s Infamous Championship Throwback Scheme Spotted in the Wild Amid Retirement Season

2017 was the year Martin Truex Jr. and his tangerine Toyota Camry dominated the NASCAR world. The current Joe Gibbs Racing #19 won his first and only Cup Series championship back in 2017 for Furniture Row Racing. In what was a display of pure mastery, MTJ won 8 races and 4 out of 10 playoff races to clinch the title.

Ever since then, Martin Truex Jr. has never been able to recapture championship success but has made the championship four on five different occasions in his career. This feat is still joint most amongst any active driver, tied with Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Joey Logano. All this success was seen while driving that beautiful Toyota, and fans have been craving a championship throwback design for a fitting send-off to the NASCAR legend who will be retiring at the end of the season.

Martin Truex Jr. fans get a parting gift

The 44-year-old will retire from full-time racing after the 2024 season, and rumors of a throwback design have swarmed social media. This throwback was spotted by an X (formerly Twitter) user who pointed out Martin Truex Jr.‘s orange Toyota Camry in a garage. This sparked discussion as to whether Truex was going to have one last dance in his iconic car.

MTJ drove the championship Camry as the #78 for Furniture Row Racing in 2017, a number that changed his fortunes as a NASCAR driver. Before 2014, he didn’t really have the greatest career as #56, holding the second-longest winless streak in NASCAR history from 2006-2013 with 218 races without a win and the longest winless streak for any driver between their first two wins. He switched to Furniture Row Racing in 2014 after he was embroiled in the infamous spin gate scandal with Michael Waltrip Racing in 2013. Crew chief Cole Pearn was a turning point in his career after teaming up with him in 2015 turned his fortunes around.

Now that we have his tumultuous past out of the way, it’s time to focus on his comeback with Camry. From 2015-2018, Truex Jr. made the Championship 4 in three out of the 4 years, with an 11th-place points finish being his worst season. His true peak was in 2017 when he took his #78 to the championship. He spoke in a 2022 interview about the biggest moment of his career, saying, “The championship, of course. That’s the top of the mountain and that’s why we do this. Everybody’s goal when the year starts is to win a championship. So to be able to do that is amazing,”

A throwback to MTJ’s unique career highlights

In a topsy-turvy career that saw him compete for championships and struggle to win a race, Martin Truex Jr. has seen it all.

• He dominated NASCAR and won 24 races in the span of 5 years between 2015 and 2019 for Furniture Row Racing (2014-2018) and Joe Gibbs Racing (2019-). This was coming after having just a meager 3 wins in the previous 10 seasons as a full-time driver.
• He truly only started winning consistently at the age of 35, and his championship came when he was 37!
• He stamped his authority in 2017 during the Coca-Cola 600, which is NASCAR’s longest race, running for 600 miles on the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Martin Truex Jr. led for 492 out of the 500 laps in what is, to this day, one of the more astonishingly dominant performances of all time.

Despite an incredibly short-lived peak, MTJ managed to capture the hearts of racing fans all over the world, proving that age is just another number. Going from a ‘bust’ to a champion, he is a prime example of a comeback story for the ages and one that reminds you that anything can happen in sports.

As he prepares to conclude his career, fans hope he will take the wheel of that legendary Orange Camry one last time, giving them a glimpse of his remarkable achievements in that car. Does Truex Jr. have it in him to pull off one last miracle in his championship vehicle?