BRISTOL, Tenn. — NASCAR champion Martin Truex Jr. needs sponsorship to stay with his championship-winning race team.
Truex is locked in a fierce battle with former champions Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick in his push to defend last year’s Cup Series title. His Furniture Row Racing team is in the mix even though the future of the No. 78 team is in flux.
Furniture Row is seeking a primary sponsor for next year and does not have contracts with Truex or manufacturer Toyota. Truex said he hopes to have a better idea on what his future holds in the next few weeks.
“Right now we need sponsorship. That’s as simple as it gets,” Truex said Friday.
Colorado-based Furniture Row for years was sponsored by team owner Barney Visser, who with Truex was finally able to sell inventory and bring funding to the car. The team had a breakout 2017 season and won the Cup title, but 5-Hour Energy is leaving at the end of this season and Visser doesn’t want to return to funding the operation out of pocket.
• Kyle Larson won his third pole of the season, turning a lap at 127.792 mph in qualifying at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.
Chase Elliott was second at 127.665. Kyle Busch was third on a track that he’s mastered throughout his career. Busch will be seeking his eighth Cup victory at Bristol in Saturday night’s race.
Larson calls Bristol his favorite track but he had never won there until Friday night, when he won an Xfinity Series race.
“We’ve been close so many times,” Larson said. “I feel like we’ve been second or third and led the most laps here so many times.”
Larson’s chances of winning Saturday night could depend on whether he can hold off Busch, who has six wins this year and holds a narrow lead over Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. in the season standings.
Harvick qualified sixth.
Truex didn’t make it out of the second round of qualifying and will start 17th out of 40 cars. That represents his lowest qualifying position since he started 36th on July 1 at Chicagoland, where he went on to finish fourth.
Saturday night marks the 40th anniversary of Bristol’s traditional late-summer Cup race. The threat of inclement weather has caused the starting time to be moved up to 6:45 p.m., an hour earlier than the originally scheduled start.
XFINITY: Larson capitalized on Kyle Busch’s early exit to win the Xfinity Series race.
The race went into overtime after Daniel Hemric spun with two laps remaining. Larson held off a challenge from Justin Allgaier on the restart.
Allgaier ended up in third place, behind Christopher Bell.
Larson has won four of the six Xfinity Series races he has entered this season.
Busch led for the first 70 laps until he got a flat right front tire that caused him to hit the wall and damaged his car enough that he couldn’t return.
TRUCKS: Johnny Sauter took the lead with five laps left when John Hunter Nemechek slowed because of late fuel pickup issues, then held off Stewart Friesen for his fifth Camping World Truck Series victory of the season Thursday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.
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