Furniture Row Driver Finishes 17th in South Florida
HOMESTEAD, Fla. (Nov. 16, 2014) – Martin Truex Jr. ended the 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season Sunday with a 17th-place finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Truex, who qualified 10th for the Ford EcoBoost 400, fought handling issues throughout the 267-lap race on the 1.5-mile oval.
His No. 78 Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Chevrolet, suffered fender damage early, which made the car tight. The fender problem dropped him out of the top-10 in track position.
After a couple of pit stops to repair the fender issue, the No. 78 went from tight to loose. A number of chassis adjustments were made on ensuing pit stops, but Truex couldn’t find the happy aerodynamic medium as he battled his way to the checkered flag.
“This is not the way we wanted to end the season,” said Truex, whose worst finish was 11th in his last eight starts at Homestead. “We made a number of changes but never had the proper amount of grip.”
The finish left Truex with mixed feelings heading into the offseason.
“We’re all disappointed with the ending, but the positive side is that we made performance improvements the past couple of months,” stated Truex, who ended the season 24th in driver points. “We’ll take what we learned and build on that to become one of the Chase contenders next year. That is our focus as we prepare for 2015.”
Speaking of the Chase, the new playoff format, which started back in September, hit a crescendo during the closing laps with Chase contenders Kevin Harvick and Ryan Newman battling for the win. The race victory and the Sprint Cup Series driver championship went to Harvick with Newman coming in second.
Finishing positions 3-10 in the 400-mile race were as follows: Brad Keselowski, Paul Menard, Jamie McMurray, Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer, Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon.
The race had 18 lead changes among five drivers and 13 cautions for 52 laps.
The 2015 Sprint Cup season opens with the Daytona 500 on Feb. 22.
