Barney Visser might be the most passionate and appreciative boss he’s ever had, Martin Truex Jr. said.
It’s not about the money or fame, Truex said of the Furniture Row Racing owner, but rather the love of the racing.
“It really takes me back to my Saturday night short-track racing coming up through the ranks,” said the NASCAR driver. “You didn’t do it for sponsor, you didn’t do it for money. You did it because that’s what you want to do, and you love it.”
Visser, of Cherry Hills, is one of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series owners who funds his team 100 percent. Furniture Row Racing, along with two other teams this year, are the first since 2005 to begin the season with seven top-10 finishes. Truex is third in the point standings, only 40 points behind leader and defending series champion Kevin Harvick.
Furniture Row and Denver Mattress sponsor Truex’s No. 78 Chevrolet, but Visser owns those Colorado-based companies. Truex’s 2015 prize winnings of $1,447,503 don’t come close to matching Furniture Row Racing’s payroll and expenses.
“Not even close,” said Visser, a college dropout and Vietnam veteran who has built Furniture Row into a 330-store national giant. He would like to get outside sponsorship of his racing operation. “(It’s) definitely an area we’re weak in and haven’t been able to figure it out,” he said.
But he takes immense pride in how well FRR has done with little outside help. Along with Harvick and second-place Joey Logano — who drive for big-money Stewart-Haas Racing and Team Penske, respectively — Truex is the first driver to finish inside the top 10 in the first seven races since Jimmie Johnson, a year before Johnson won the first of his six Sprint Cup titles.
“It’s so much fun to go to the racetrack — especially after we’re running well — and see the excitement on Barney’s face, to see the smile and how pumped up he is,” Truex said. “He’s a pretty quiet guy, but he’s really excited this year about the program and it’s fun to see it because he’s put so much into it, and it’s good to give him back some results.”
Truex, 34, struggled in his first year with FRR. He started all 36 races in 2014, but he had only five top-10 finishes and finished 25th in points.
Asked about the turnaround this year, Truex said: “It’s not just one thing. It’s a lot of parts and pieces, but at the end of the day, we have better race cars and our people have a better understanding of the race cars we have. Everything has been made easier. Things are consistent, and that allows us to really have a good idea of what we’re going to have going into the race weekend, and spend our time at the race track fine tuning, not searching for big chunks of speed.
“Last year — really the first two-thirds of the season or more — we were searching, big time, for big things — things you don’t find at the racetrack. This year we show up, we’re already competitive, and we fine tune.”
Mike Chambers: mchambers@denverpost.com or
Incredible improvement
In only seven Sprint Cup races this year, Furniture Row Racing driving Martin Truex Jr. has exceeded his top-10 finishes from his first 36-race season with the Denver-based team:
| Year | Races | Top 5 | Top 10 | Points |
| 2014 | 36 | 1 | 5 | 25th |
| 2015 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 3rd |
