NASCAR’s Cinderella team relishes championship opportunity

There is no shortage of reasons to dismiss Martin Truex Jr.‘s chance to win the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship finale Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Of the four title finalists Truex doesn’t drive for a four-team powerhouse like Kevin Harvick (Stewart-Haas Racing), Jeff Gordon (Hendrick Motorsports) and Kyle Busch (Joe Gibbs Racing), all of whom have an abundant of resources at their disposal. SHR, Hendrick and JGR have all won multiple championships, whereas Furniture Row is in the Chase for just the second time.

In fact, Truex doesn’t even have a single teammate. Furniture Row Racing is an outlier because not only it’s a single-car operation, but also due to its location, which is not in NASCAR’s Charlotte, N.C., hub, but in Denver -- as in Denver, Col., not Denver, N.C. A hindrance exemplified when the team’s hauler got stuck in a blizzard en route to South Florida and needed to stop in a Walmart parking lot to wait out the storm Tuesday night.

And while Harvick, Gordon and Busch have an array of prominent Fortune 500 high-dollar sponsorships, Truex’s sole primary backer is the company owned by team principle Barney Visser, which is how Furniture Row gets its name.

Beyond what Furniture Row doesn’t possess, the respective résumés of the four title contenders are vastly dissimilar. Harvick is the defending champion, Gordon a four-time champion third on the all-time wins list and though Busch is devoid of a title, only Jimmie Johnson has won more races since 2005.

As for Truex? He’s recorded just three victories in 368 career starts and never finished better than 11th in the standings. Not exactly credentials that causes the competition to shake with trepidation.

“Certainly with my record in the Sprint Cup Series, there have been a lot of ups and downs throughout my career,” Truex said. I’ve never really been in a position like this before. For a lot of reasons, we are the underdog: One-car team from Denver, rookie crew chief, I’ve never raced for a championship in this series.

“The way I see it, (Harvick, Gordon and Busch) are supposed to win the championship and I’m probably not.”

But while it’s easy to write off Truex and Furniture Row as a cute story on a magical fluke run, that would be foolhardy. Because despite long odds there is evidence to suggest driver and team is more than just a Cinderella trying to pull off one of the great upsets in NASCAR championship history.

During the 26-race regular season Truex ranked ahead of Gordon in wins, top fives, top 10s, laps led and average finish. He demonstrated remarkable consistency with 14 top-10 finishes in the first 15 races and spent much of the year ranked second in points, trailing only Harvick.

Although Furniture Row is an anomaly, it’s made being a single-car outfit work to its advantage. It doesn’t have hundreds and hundreds of personnel like the mega teams, but its roughly 60 employees are close-knit and due to being housed in Denver, there is little turnover in contrast to the Carolinas where job-hopping is commonplace.

“We don’t have any other friends in auto racing on Cup teams,” Furniture Row general manager Joe Garone said. “It’s us. It’s a family. You go out to lunch, you’re not bumping into other guys on other race teams, talking about things that might be a disturbance to you. We have each other’s backs because of that.”

Some may bristle at the underdog label, not Furniture Row, which recognizes its limitations then seeks to minimize any disadvantage. Small teams are supposed to have a certain performance level -- and that certainly isn’t racing for the championship -- and yet, Truex outlasted a host of prominent names to earn his place alongside three of NASCAR’s biggest superstars on Sunday.

And though he may not prevail, in a winner-take-all race Truex and Furniture Row have more than a puncher’s chance at coming out on top.

“I do feel confident,” Garrone said. “We’re coming into this on the offense.”