Furniture Row Racing: 'Not fielding a team in 2019 is not an option'

The team that fields the car for defending Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. isn’t going anywhere in 2019.

That seems like a sentence that’s been a foregone conclusion, right? Well, it was backed up in a statement Wednesday by Furniture Row Racing, which told the Sports Business Journal that it wasn’t shutting down. The statement, per SBJ, was denying “garage rumblings” that it was closing its doors.

Furniture Row Racing is looking for sponsorship after 5-Hour Energy told the team it wasn’t coming back in 2019. 5-Hour is serving as a co-primary sponsor for the team in 30 races in 2018 and sponsored Erik Jones’ No. 77 car in 2017. That No. 77 car was shut down before the 2018 season as Furniture Row Racing scaled back to one car and transferred the 5-Hour sponsorship to Truex.

But even though Furniture Row is looking for millions of dollars in sponsorship money, it’s a remarkable statement about the current NASCAR environment that the team of the reigning Cup Series champion had to go on the record to refute rumors that it was disappearing.

But there are a lot of things that are remarkable about the state of NASCAR in 2018, from the series being under interim leadership, executives’ denial of a less-than-prolific sponsorship market and declining attendance and television audiences. This statement simply joins a crowded list of not-so-flattering things about the family-owned series.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter

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