Truex confirmed at Furniture Row for 2014 - MotorSportsTalk

The latest official NASCAR 2014 silly season domino has fallen. Martin Truex Jr., as had been rumored and forecast for a few weeks, will switch to Furniture Row Racing and take over the No. 78 Chevrolet in a multi-year deal. The team announced the move Friday at Texas Motor Speedway.

“I know it’s been a big secret and everyone’s really shocked,” Truex joked. “In all seriousness it’s a big deal for me. Excited to drive with Joe (Garone, GM of FRR) and Barney (Visser, owner). I’m impressed with their organization, what they’ve done this year. Anyone in this garage area will tell you how impressed they are to see them progress.”

Truex leaves Michael Waltrip Racing after four seasons, and five with DEI/Chip Ganassi Racing prior to that.

“It’s an opportunity to go to a winning race car, start fresh, and do things I want to do,” Truex said of his move to the Denver-based organization. “It’s only the second time I’ve changed teams. It’s very difficult. I really enjoyed my four years at Michael Waltrip Racing, wouldn’t change anything there. But I felt it was time for change.”

A dark cloud has followed Truex since Richmond, when as the beneficiary of other MWR team tactics, he provisionally made it into the 2013 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup.

We say provisionally here because the penalties imposed on the team after Clint Bowyer’s race-altering spin would affect Truex, and kicked him out of the Chase. Shortly thereafter, Truex’s primary sponsor NAPA withdrew its support and the team announced a reduction from three to two full-time cars.

Waltrip told Truex he was free to seek other options, and the Mayetta, N.J. did so over the last month. The problem for Truex is that the lone plum ride available was at Furniture Row, after a half dozen other big seats (two Stewart Haas and one Childress, Ganassi, JTG Daugherty, and MWR) already changed hands.

“I think the biggest thing for me as a driver was that when dominos started to fall, I wasn’t sure where I’d end up,” Truex said. “I feel really blessed, really lucky.”

Nonetheless, this is a team on the rise thanks to Kurt Busch’s efforts over the last year-plus and Truex is a driver on the rise after his best season with MWR to this point. He got his first win in six years, an emotional triumph on the road course at Sonoma in June.

Now, he’ll have the added motivation of fighting back from bad luck that sabotaged the second half of his season, in new digs.

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INDIANAPOLIS — The first Indy 500 victory for Josef Newgarden also was the richest in race history from a record 2023 purse of just more than $17 million.

The two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion, who continued his celebration Monday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earned $3.666 million for winning the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

The purse and winner’s share both are the largest in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

It’s the second consecutive year that the Indy 500 purse set a record after the 2022 Indy 500 became the first to crack the $16 million mark (nearly doubling the 2021 purse that offered a purse of $8,854,565 after a crowd limited to 135,000 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

The average payout for IndyCar drivers was $500,600 (exceeding last year’s average of $485,000).

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske, whose team also fields Newgarden’s No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet, had made raising purses a priority since buying the track in 2020. But Penske but was unable to post big money purses until the race returned to full capacity grandstands last year.

The largest Indy 500 purse before this year was $14.4 million for the 2008 Indy 500 won by Scott Dixon (whose share was $2,988,065). Ericsson’s haul made him the second Indy 500 winner to top $3 million (2009 winner Helio Castroneves won $3,048,005.

Runner-up Marcus Ericsson won $1.043 million after falling short by 0.0974 seconds in the fourth-closest finish in Indy 500 history.

The 107th Indy 500 drew a crowd of at least 330,000 that was the largest since the sellout for the 100th running in 2016, and the second-largest in more than two decades, according to track officials.

“This is the greatest race in the world, and it was an especially monumental Month of May featuring packed grandstands and intense on-track action,” Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles said in a release. “Now, we have the best end card possible for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500: a record-breaking purse for the history books.”

Benjamin Pedersen was named the Indy 500 rookie of the year, earning a $50,000 bonus.

The race’s purse is determined through contingency and special awards from IMS and IndyCar. The awards were presented Monday night in the annual Indy 500 Victory Celebration at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis.

The payouts for the 107th Indy 500:

1. Josef Newgarden, $3,666,000
2. Marcus Ericsson, $1,043,000
3. Santino Ferrucci, $481,800
4. Alex Palou, $801,500
5. Alexander Rossi, $574,000
6. Scott Dixon, $582,000
7. Takuma Sato, $217,300
8. Conor Daly, $512,000
9. Colton Herta, $506,500
10. Rinus VeeKay, $556,500
11. Ryan Hunter‐Reay, $145,500
12. Callum Ilott, $495,500
13. Devlin DeFrancesco, $482,000
14. Scott McLaughlin, $485,000
15. Helio Castroneves, $481,500
16. Tony Kanaan, $105,000
17. Marco Andretti, $102,000
18. Jack Harvey, $472,000
19. Christian Lundgaard, $467,500
20. Ed Carpenter, $102,000
21. Benjamin Pedersen (R), $215,300
22. Graham Rahal, $565,500*
23. Will Power, $488,000
24. Pato O’Ward, $516,500
25. Simon Pagenaud, $465,500
26. Agustín Canapino (R), $156,300
27. Felix Rosenqvist, $278,300
28. Kyle Kirkwood, $465,500
29. David Malukas, $462,000
30. Romain Grosjean, $462,000
31. Sting Ray Robb (R), $463,000
32. RC Enerson (R), $103,000
33. Katherine Legge, $102,000

*–Broken down between two teams, $460,000 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, $105,500 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports