DENVER — There’s a new sheriff in town — from way out of town.
Furniture Row Racing, which basically defines the term “outlier” as it relates to NASCAR, has stepped up to become a legitimate race and championship contender in the Sprint Cup Series. Driver Martin Truex Jr. solidified that posture in qualifying for the four-car finale last season and again in February, by coming within a few feet of winning the Daytona 500 and scoring what would have been a landmark victory for one of stock car racing’s unique — and rising — operations.
Truex led the most laps Saturday night at Texas Motor Speedway and was on his way to victory before a series of late cautions and a call to stay out while others pitted for fresh tires cost him the win.
Furniture Row Racing, owned by Denver businessman Barney Visser and named for his home furnishings chain, is located in an industrial area of Denver within sight of the Colorado capital’s downtown. As such, FRR is the only major stock car operation beyond the western shoreline of the Mississippi River.
FRR stands alone — really alone, an aberration in a NASCAR world in which the vast majority of teams — and every other good one — is located within easy orbit of Charlotte, N.C., for decades the heart of stock car racing’s major leagues.
Visser, a native of Denver and owner of ranching and farming operations and a state-of-the-art machine shop here in addition to his widespread furniture empire, started the team 11 years ago and has grown it into one that consistently challenges the sport’s traditional powers despite its status as a single-car operation with just 64 employees. Along the way, the smart money might have suggested a move to North Carolina, but Visser, a quiet but determined team owner, would have none of that.
Despite the logistical challenges associated with such an odd location, it was Denver or nowhere. For the people who work in the nondescript FRR shop — there’s no sign out front and no indication that a successful Sprint Cup team lives here — Denver works just fine, thank you.
“I’m off the plane for five minutes, and I fell in love with Colorado,” Chris Moyher, a former North Carolina resident who works on suspensions for Truex’s cars, told USA TODAY Sports. “As soon as I came around the corner out of the airport and saw those mountains, I said, ‘I’m not going back. I’ve found my home. I knew this is where I wanted to be.’ ”
Moyher, 41, has worked for the team for seven years. He lives on a ranch 50 miles — “door to door,” he said — from the shop. In exchange for a room in the ranchhouse, he cares for the owners’ horses and cattle, and he has time to pursue his interests in training horses and roping.
“I get up at 3:45 and feed the horses before I leave by 5 to get to the shop by 6,” Moyher said. “It’s nice to go out there at 4 in the morning. The stars are out over the mountains. It’s quiet. There’s fresh air.”
Moyher and other shop employees report to FRR by 6 a.m. because the team works as if it’s in the Eastern time zone — typically 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Denver time to match Charlotte’s 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. day. That puts FRR employees in the same time cycle as suppliers and associates who work in Charlotte, making communication easier.
And, as Moyher, nicknamed “Cowboy,” points out, he usually gets home in time to do some work around the ranch or ride in the valley on his horse.
“Most of the guys who work here really enjoy the mountains,” FRR general manager Joe Garone, 55, the team’s original employee, told USA TODAY Sports. “They ride Harleys. They fish or hunt. There’s a mountain life here that is really special. You can look out over valleys here that you see in magazines. It’s absolutely incredible.”
Mechanic Craig Phillips, 68, knows the landscape well. Despite having the strongest of ties to North Carolina and its racing — a job at Dale Earnhardt Inc. during its glory days — he jumped ship after the departure of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and landed in Colorado.
Having hunted near Denver, Phillips made the move without being pushed. He’s been with FRR for nine seasons.
Phillips also lives 50 miles from the shop, in a mountain house at 8,500 feet.
“I’ve got everything that is wild in Colorado in my backyard,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “The other day, 25 elk came through the backyard. We have five mountain lions in the drainage where I live. And black bears.”
Phillips’ backyard is within easy reach of 25 miles of horse trails, significantly closer than the long plane flights he used to take to get to the high ground of the Rockies.
“I’ve never had anybody come out here to spend a few days and not want to come back,” Garone said.
DENVER ADVANTAGES
Although teams based in the Charlotte area have easier access to experienced personnel, that reality also carries a negative — it’s also easy for a mechanic to move a few blocks to work for another team that might offer more money or a better position.
In Denver, there are no other teams looking to hire Sprint Cup mechanics. Ranch hands are in greater demand.
“We know some guy is not going down the street for $100 more per week,” crew chief Cole Pearn told USA TODAY Sports. “Guys don’t (go) out for dinner with guys from other teams, so information control is much better. As much as there are some negatives maybe on the time side of it, there are so many other benefits to focus on.”
For Pearn, those benefits include snow-skiing in the Arapahoe Basin west of Denver. His two kids are growing up as children of the mountains.
“It’s always been a dream to live next to the mountains and have that (as) part of my lifestyle,” Pearn said. “The fact I could do that and work in racing at the same time was pretty attractive to me.”
Beyond the unusual positives tied to living near the Rockies, the team’s relatively recent competitive climb also adds to the attractive environment at the shop, Pearn said.
“The more solid we become, the easier it is to get people,” he said. “The comfort level you have in working here is a huge positive. It relaxes everybody immediately, I think.”
Truex, who lives in North Carolina, visits the shop several times a year and said he is impressed that the Denver area has adopted Furniture Row as “its” team and that his teammates compete at such a high level.
“We don’t have 450 people like other teams,” Truex said. “There are a lot less distractions and a lot less nonsense to put up with. A lot less babysitting. It’s a smaller group that loves what they’re doing, and it’s a great work environment to show their talent and put it to work.”
FURNITURE ROW BEGINNINGS
The journey to making the Furniture Row name mean something beyond sofas and mattresses began innocently enough in 2005 when short-track racer and Denver resident Jerry Robertson, a repeat winner at Colorado National Speedway and a friend of Visser’s, talked Visser into going Xfinity Series (then Busch Series) racing on a limited basis.
They ran 10 races in cars owned by Visser in 2005. Mostly on a lark, Visser also decided to run a Cup race that year at Dover, Del., and driver Kenny Wallace qualified, finishing 34th.
Garone, a former Denver resident who had moved to the Charlotte area to work for NASCAR teams and later became the first employee of the NASCAR Research and Development Center, welcomed the chance to return to Denver and get the engines running at FRR.
“I walked in this location — an empty warehouse,” Garone said. “It was just me. Jerry had a Late Model team and knew some guys, and they came over after their normal jobs and helped out.
“Barney wanted to do more races, and I was able to hire guys over a period of time to where we had a basic team. I wore a lot of different hats until we got people in here with experience.”
Visser, already a success in business, steadily built the operation.
“I’ve invested a lot. But the money doesn’t mean very much to me,” Visser told USA TODAY Sports. “It just doesn’t. I want to get my debts taken care of, but beyond that I’m just not going to let the money control me. I’m going to do what I want to do, if I can.”
Garone said Visser’s final decision to pursue Cup racing came about a month after Wallace’s run.
“There was a big crowd at Dover that Sunday,” Garone said. “We were walking down pit road, and I really think I knew then that Barney was going to switch to advertising his companies in front of the NASCAR fans. A month later, I got the call. That’s the day it turned into a business.”
MAKING PROGRESS
Veteran driver Joe Nemechek came on board in 2007 and helped the team with qualifying — a specialty for “Front Row” Joe. Nemechek ran 32 races in 2008 and was replaced by Regan Smith, who ran only 18 in 2009 as the team trimmed its schedule when the national economy took a dive.
The team’s first full Cup season, again with Smith, was 2010. Smith scored the team’s first victory in May 2011 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.
Kurt Busch, needing a fresh ride to boost a career in turmoil, joined the team in 2012 to run six races, then ran the full season in 2013, earning FRR the distinction of being the first single-car team to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. He finished 10th, a run boosted by the experience of veteran crew chief Todd Berrier, identified by Visser as a key element in the team’s progress.
Busch moved on, and Truex arrived for the 2014 season. Last year, he scored FRR’s second Cup win — at Pocono Raceway — and qualified for the Chase, pushing the team, now under Pearn’s direction, all the way to the finale at Homestead, Fla., where he finished fourth for the team’s best points score ever.
“The biggest thing was when Kurt came on board,” Garone said. “He validated what we thought about our race cars. We thought our cars were some of the best in the garage. For him to get in the cars and run like he did was great. We didn’t win because we weren’t quite there yet, but our expectations got much higher.”
Now they are quite high, indeed.
After Truex finished seventh in the second race of this season at Atlanta Motor Speedway (a week after almost winning the Daytona 500), the team left Georgia “just miserable about it,” Garone said.
“And to think,” said Carolyn Visser, Barney’s wife, “just a year or so ago you felt good about seventh.”
