Background and career
Martin Lee Truex Jr. (born June 29, 1980) is an American semi-retired professional stock car racing driver. He last competed in the NASCAR Cup Series, driving the No. 56 Toyota Camry XSE for Tricon Garage. He is the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion and a two-time Xfinity Series champion, having won two consecutive championships in 2004 and 2005. Many members of Truex Jr.'s family are current or retired NASCAR drivers. His younger brother Ryan Truex competes in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for JGR, and is a two-time consecutive champion in the ARCA Menards Series East. His late father Martin Sr. competed in the East Series in the 1990s. His uncle Barney competed part-time in the Whelen Modified Tour in the 1980s. His cousins, Curtis Truex Jr. and Tyler Truex, are late model racing drivers.
The son of former racer Martin Truex Sr., Martin Jr. began his racing career driving go-karts at the New Egypt Speedway, located in Ocean County, New Jersey, when it was still a paved track (the track was later switched to dirt). Truex Jr. made his move to the Modified division at Wall Stadium in 1998, as soon as he was old enough to race a car under New Jersey regulations, at age eighteen. In 2000, Truex moved south and rented a home from Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Mooresville, North Carolina, eventually purchasing his own home there. Following in his late father's footsteps, he began racing in the Busch North Series. He ran three full seasons (2000 to 2002) and made limited starts in 2003. Truex claimed thirteen poles and five wins driving his family-owned No. 56 SeaWatch Chevy.
Truex made his first Busch Series start in 2001 at Dover International Speedway in his late father's No. 56 Chevy. He started nineteenth but finished 38th after an early wreck. In 2002, Truex drove one race for Phoenix Racing at New Hampshire International Speedway, starting thirteenth and finishing 29th. He ran three races the rest of that season for his late father, his best finish seventeenth at Dover. In 2003, Truex began the season with his late father's team, before he was hired by Dale Earnhardt Jr. to drive his No. 81 Chance 2 Motorsports Chevy. He made his debut with Chance 2 at Richmond International Raceway, where he qualified sixth and led 11 laps before transmission failure forced him to a 31st-place finish. He split time between Chance 2 and his late father's team for the balance of the season, except at Dover, where he drove for Stanton Barrett. He had a sixth-place run at Bristol Motor Speedway and ended the season with two consecutive second-place finishes. He ran a total of ten races that season. Truex raced full-time for Chance 2 in 2004. At Bristol Motor Speedway, he would earn his first career victory, and he would later add three more victories over the next seven races. This would include a victory at Talladega Superspeedway, which broke his car owner's streak of winning restrictor plate races in the Busch Series, and a victory at the final NASCAR event held at Nazareth Speedway. He took the lead in the championship after Nazareth but lost it to rookie Kyle Busch a few races later. However, a series of top-five and top-ten finishes in the second half of the season allowed Truex to pull away from Busch, clinching the Busch Series championship with a race to spare. While on his way to that championship, Truex made an appearance in the Nextel Cup Series as a relief driver to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who had suffered burns in a sports car accident. Truex started his first career Cup race for Dale Earnhardt, Inc. (DEI) in the No. 1 at Atlanta Motor Speedway later that year, qualifying 33rd and finishing 37th. Truex stayed in the Busch Series to defend his championship in 2005, winning the title for the second season in a row. He won the first Busch Series points race held outside the United States, in Mexico, as well as defending his wins at Talladega and Dover International Speedway. He took his first Daytona International Speedway win on July 1, 2005.
In 2006, Truex moved to the No. 1 DEI Chevy full-time in the Nextel Cup Series. He had two top-five finishes and finished nineteenth in points. Truex got his first win of the 2007 season in the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Open, securing a spot in the 2007 Nextel All-Star Challenge, where he finished tenth. A few weeks later, he won the Autism Speaks 400, scoring his first Sprint Cup Series win with an interval of seven seconds between pole-sitter Ryan Newman and himself, even though he led over half of the race—216 of the 400 laps. This victory led to a jump in overall points, advancing him to thirteenth, followed by a 3rd-place finish at Pocono Raceway and a second-place finish at Michigan. With a fifteenth-place finish in the Chevy Rock and Roll 400, Truex clinched a spot in his first Chase for the Sprint Cup and finished eleventh in points at season's end. He did not go to victory lane in 2008, but he did have eleven top-tens and finished fifteenth in the final points standings.
At the beginning of the 2009 season, Dale Earnhardt, Inc. merged into Chip Ganassi Racing and was renamed Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates. The move was in effect a closing of DEI, and Truex's No. 1 moved to Ganassi to replace the defunct No. 41 of Reed Sorenson. Truex began the year by winning the pole for the Daytona 500. Later in the season, Truex had claimed two more pole positions at Atlanta and Phoenix, following his first pole since 2007 at Texas. 2009 would be Truex's lone season with Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing, as he departed following the season and was replaced by Jamie McMurray.
After the 2009 season, Truex left Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing to drive the No. 56 Toyota Camry for Michael Waltrip Racing, receiving owner points from the No. 55 car formerly driven by Waltrip. The No. 56 was the number Martin's late father drove in during his time in the Grand National Division and is considered the "family number". In his first race for Michael Waltrip Racing, Truex finished sixth in the Daytona 500. After a series of setbacks, including a blown engine and accidents, in the following three weeks, he fell back to 24th in the point standings, but in the next seven races, after finishing in the top-twelve five times and all top-nineteen finishes, he would rise to thirteenth in the final point standings. At Dover, he earned his fifth career pole. Truex won the All-Star Showdown at Charlotte, thereby earning the first transfer spot for the All-Star Race, which he finished second in from a nineteenth (out of 21) starting spot. Truex would go on to finish the 2010 season 22nd in the point standings with one top-five finish and seven top-ten finishes. At Martinsville the following year in 2011, a stuck throttle caused Truex to make contact with Kasey Kahne, resulting in a large wreck; Truex hit the wall hard head-on and his car flew on fire for a few seconds as Kahne hit the wall in his car's rear. Truex climbed out instantly and went to check on Kahne, who received a standing ovation as he climbed out uninjured. Truex then left with officials for the care center. He said the wreck was the hardest of his career, and both Truex and Kahne were released with normal symptoms. The next week, officials told him his wreck was the hardest crash at Martinsville. Truex won another pole at Dover International Raceway. Truex ran well in most of the races but often struggled to finish the races. He was docked 25 points because of a windshield violation in the fall Talladega race. He ended the season 18th in points, with three top-fives and twelve top-tens.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
