KANSAS, City, Kan. — On a perfect October Sunday morning in America’s heartland, “Coach” Joe Gibbs had football on the television in his plush motor home. Ron Pearn, meanwhile, donned his Broncos sweat shirt outside the garage of Denver-based Furniture Row Racing. It was a playoff race day at what is regarded as Colorado’s “home” big-league track, Kansas Speedway.

Pearn — the father of Furniture Row crew chief Cole Pearn — and Gibbs, the Super Bowl champion coach, love football but their total focus on this morning soon turned toward that day’s race. They have massive interest in five of the 12 drivers still alive in NASCAR’s new-look Chase for the Championship playoff format.

Single-car Furniture Row and driver Martin Truex Jr. will switch manufacturers for next season, going from Chevrolet to Toyota, and begin a technical alliance with four-car Joe Gibbs Racing, which is already running Toyotas. All five future teammates — including Gibbs’ Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth — have a shot at this year’s championship.

“We bring in another high-quality team that’s got a crew chief who’s very, very smart and a driver that can really perform,” Gibbs said of Furniture Row. “When you add that to our four guys, what it gives you is another whole step up as far as people who can solve problems. When you got five cars, you can find solutions out there. You may have four that are off, and one that hits it.”

The partnership is one more feather in the hat of Furniture Row, a the trailblazing team that doesn’t conform to the norm. Owned by Cherry Hills resident Barney Visser, Furniture Row is the only NASCAR Sprint Cup team based outside the Carolinas.

PHOTOS: Furniture Row Racing: Inside Denver’s NASCAR team

“If you surround yourself with the right people, people are going to think you’re pretty great,” Visser said.

And here’s one secret to their success: Colorado’s quality of life.

“We all want to live in Colorado, and nobody is looking over their shoulder,” car chief Blake Harris said.

There is no disgruntled crew member from one team looking to walk down the street into a new garage and take your job. The 30-some Denver crew members — 11 of whom travel — are invested employees.

Ten years ago, Gibbs and NASCAR vice chairman and past president Mike Helton had similar thoughts when Visser said he would create a Sprint Cup team in Denver. Had to be Denver, N.C., Helton and Gibbs figured. You simply don’t do it outside the Carolinas, where all the expertise is.

“I was not sure their model would be successful,” Helton said. “Barney was pretty committed to running it out of Denver and we had some concerns about that. I don’t think it took very long for the industry — NASCAR and everybody else — to understand Barney had a passion and drive to close that gap. He’s done it pretty impressively.

Said Gibbs: “I just felt like that was a pretty good stretch. Charlotte is the hotbed of racing and where the people supply all of the parts of pieces. I just felt like, in getting to know Barney, he’s very much an individualist. He loves the fact that he’s in Colorado. He said, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this,’ and I think everybody has kind of admired what he’s done.”

In this, Furniture Row’s best season, Truex is eighth overall in the standings but just a point behind fifth. The 12-car playoffs will be trimmed to eight after Sunday’s race in Talladega, Ala.

Here is a closer look at the people behind the scenes who make Furniture Row go.

Follow the yellow-brick road: Furniture Row Racing driver Martin Truex Jr. goes through Turn 1 at Kansas Speedway while practicing for the Hollywood Casino 400. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

Engineering expertise

Furniture Row’s top-three strategists could apply for high-level jobs at NASA. Which is good, because NASCAR has become as technical — or more so — than IndyCar racing.

“Very detailed, very technical. That’s for sure,” said Cole Pearn, who is in his first year as crew chief after previously serving as lead engineer. He has an engineering degree from the University of Waterloo (Ontario) near his hometown of London.

The crew chief is no longer the most important person outside the car.

“When I first got into this, the crew chief did everything. The engineer was a very small piece,” said lead race engineer Jeff “Jazzy” Curtis, who has a mechanical engineering degree from Cornell. “And now, it’s evolved to where it’s almost like equal positions. Most of the crew chiefs that are engineers are at least somewhat practical and have a good racing background. If you’re pure theory as a crew chief, you’re probably going to struggle.”

Ron Pearn grew up racing in Ontario and is his son’s biggest fan.

“We’re not sure where he got his brains from,” the father said. “Up until he was 17 or 18, I taught him a lot about race cars. And then it came to a halt. He was way over me, even at that age.”

Curtis’ love of remote-controlled cars as a kid led him to pursue engineering.

“I started off racing RC cars when I was like 12. It was a hobby, but it expanded into actually racing them professionally in high school,” said Curtis, who commutes from North Carolina on race weekends. “When I went to college I was 99 percent sure I wanted to go into racing, and mechanical engineering is the direction you go.”

Engineer Peter Craik, like Curtis in his first year with Furniture Row, has an engineering degree from the University of Queensland in his native Australia. He sits between Curtis and Pearn in the race hauler and pit stand during the race.

Furniture Row has two radio systems: secure and unsecured. The latter can be heard by anyone tuning in to its channel, but the communication is only between Pearn, Truex and spotter Clayton Hughes, who also commutes to races from North Carolina. The unsecured channel has Pearn and Curtis talking continuously, and Truex is blocked. What Pearn and Curtis settle on is then relayed to Truex by Pearn, who presses a button to speak to his driver.

From left, Furniture Row Racing team members Pete Craik, Jeff Curtis and crew chief Cole Pearn follow driver Martin Truex Jr. from the top of the team hauler. Craik and Curtis are engineers. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

Passing inspection

In NASCAR there’s a popular expression: If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.

Passing technical inspection is of the cat-and-mouse variety, and because of that, NASCAR leaves a big window of time during race weekends for inspections. Furniture Row was flagged in Friday’s initial inspection and Saturday’s post-qualifying. It’s to be expected. “You’re pushing all those tolerances to the edge,” Harris said. “If you don’t fail it or you’re right on the money, you feel like you left something on the table. So you generally go up there on the edge.”

The No. 78 passed the three-stage inspection process Sunday morning, avoiding having to go through the process again. Sometimes, NASCAR forces teams to go through all three steps, instead of just the step it failed. Harris said it’s usually random — along with the limits the series tolerates from week to week. The rules are always being bent, with teams searching for the smallest edge.

Harris, 28, is one of the youngest car chiefs in the business. His job: immediate boss man of the guys who work on the car throughout the three-day race weekend. He executes orders given from the crew chief.

The main adjustments are getting the car set up for qualifying on Day 1 to race trim on Day 2. Through a variety of settings — plus a liberal application of duct tape to the front grille — the team seeks maximum front down force when it runs at qualifying. The more down force on a light fuel load, the faster the car will go. For race trim, the car is balanced for the long haul, when fuel loads vary, the engine requires cooling and tires wear out.

“He’s always working on that car, even if he isn’t touching it,” transport driver Roy Miller said of Harris, who graduated from Maypearl (Texas) High School with a 4.4 grade-point average. “I already put my bid in to be his coach driver when he becomes a crew chief.”

Harris is a rising star in the racing business. According to the guys, he’s also an extraordinary pianist and he can more than hold his own on the guitar and saxophone. Among the college scholarships he turned down was for music at Tarleton State in Stephenville, Texas, and academics at West Texas A&M.

“It was about January of my senior year and my dad’s like, ‘You have all these scholarships, what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I guess I got to take one, right?’ He said, ‘Where do you want to be in five years? I said I want to be in North Carolina working on race cars. He said, ‘Then why would you go to school?’ “

Harris’ father offered to pay for him to attend college in North Carolina, and Blake took a few classes, but ultimately he was too busy with racing. In hindsight, he made the right move.

“Four years later, when I would have got out of college, the economy was tanking and teams weren’t hiring. But I was already established,” he said. “So it kind of all worked out.”

Truex sits patiently in his race car in the Kansas Speedway garage before heading out for a practice session. Truex is eighth overall in the standings but just a point behind fifth. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

A brown break from black

Chris “Cowboy” Moyher, 40, is a rear-end housing specialist for Furniture Row — the guy responsible for brakes and the inner workings of the wheel. On the flight out to Kansas he donned a large straw cowboy hat and other Western apparel. At Friday’s practice and qualifying — when crew members are required to match their clothing — Cowboy still wore his large Cheyenne Frontier Days belt buckle and brown belt. Everyone else was in black.

“I didn’t ask,” Cowboy said of whether he had permission to deviate from the uniform. “I’ve worn this belt buckle every day since 1998. It’s kind of my thing. They bust my butt about my belt being brown, but I don’t care. They know me as Cowboy, so I don’t think they care.”

Cowboy doesn’t usually travel to races. He was subbing for Gary Frost, 44, who suffered a heart attack two weeks earlier. Frost missed the two ensuing races but flew in for Sunday’s race with Visser, his wife Carolyn and others.

Frost had a stent inserted in his heart and planned to return to work Monday. Indeed, he was back to work at 6 a.m. Monday; the team works on Eastern time to better communicate with its partners in North Carolina.

Cowboy might not travel again this year. But the Connecticut native has a horse to look after in Strasburg.

Crew members such as Frost, and Chuck Lemay and Kat McDonald, keep the operation on track. Lemay drives the race transport — two race cars and all the equipment — out of the team’s north Denver shop, and McDonald feeds the guys at the track.

Lemay, who also directs Truex in and out of the garage, among other side jobs, turned 60 on Saturday. He’s been with Furniture Row since shortly after its 2005 inception.

McDonald has been there from the beginning. She was hired by Visser and founding general manager Joe Garone to feed the crew and has since built her BBQ empire to 12 full-time NASCAR teams and another on a part-time basis.

“Joe and Barney, they were my first official team,” McDonald said. “I think the world of Furniture Row.”

Furniture Row’s mostly Colorado-based road crew is different than its six-man, pit-stop team that flies in on race day from North Carolina. After two days of practice and qualifying, the Colorado guys let go of primary responsibility of the car to the elite athletes during the race.

Tire changer Adam Mosher, 35, played Division II football and is the strength and conditioning coach for a pit stop-training school in Moorsville, N.C.

“We still rely on them to help do the stop,” Mosher said of the Colorado crew. “They’re involved in the gas-can sequence and getting the left-side tires to the guys. It’s definitely a team thing, but they probably don’t get the recognition they deserve.”

There isn’t much bonding between the crews, even if Truex wins. Mosher and the rest of the crew immediately fly back to North Carolina after the race on a plane owned by Chip Ganassi Racing, while the regular crew returns to Denver.

Furniture Row Racing crew, engineers and others gather around crew chief Cole Pearn, fourth from left, checking the computers during Martin Truex Jr.’s qualifying run at the Kansas Speedway October 16, 2015. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

“We’re still alive”

Furniture Row led a race-high 95 laps in the spring race at Kansas and had high hopes for a high finish Sunday. Truex qualified seventh, ran as high as second and felt he had a top-10 car but finished 15th after encountering a troubling vibration that diminished his confidence in taking the car to its limit. A costly pit-stop error with 53 laps to go put him a lap down. NASCAR penalized Truex for an uncontrolled tire when an off-going rear tire rolled out of the pit box.

“Not a good day,” Truex said on his radio while driving to the pits.

“It is what it is,” Pearn responded. “We’re still alive, though.”

After 10 seconds of silence, Truex said: “We were fast at the end.”

Forty crew members and six days of preparation did not deliver what Truex sought. They all hope everything clicks at Talladega on Sunday so they can further stamp themselves as the little team that could.

Mike Chambers: mchambers@denverpost.com or @mikechambers

Editor’s note: Denver’s Furniture Row Racing has had its best season this year and remains in the running for NASCAR’s Chase championship heading into Sunday’s race at Talladega, Ala., the sixth of 10 playoff events. Here is a look at the NASCAR team in action at last weekend’s race in Kansas City, Kan.

Martin Truex Jr. (78), Furniture Row Racing, races against Kevin Harvick, (4), and eventual race winner Joey Logano, (22) during the Hollywood Casino 400 at the Kansas Speedway October 18, 2015. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

Furniture Row Racing crew

Barney Visser

Role: Team owner, primary sponsor

Age: 66

Hometown: Denver

Residence: Cherry Hills

Joe Garone

Role: General manager

Age: 55

Hometown: Denver

Residence: Brighton

Martin Truex Jr.

Role: Driver

Age: 35

Hometown: Mayetta, N.J.

Residence: Charlotte, N.C.

Cole Pearn

Role: Crew chief

Age: 33

Hometown: London, Ontario

Residence: Golden

Jeff “Jazzy” Curtis

Role: Lead race engineer

Age: 35

Hometown: Fairfax Station, Va.

Residence: Charlotte, N.C.

Peter Craik

Role: Engineer

Age: 30

Hometown: Melbourne, Australia

Residence: Denver

Clayton Hughes

Role: Spotter

Age: 47

Hometown: Thomasville, N.C.

Residence: Charlotte, N.C.

Blake Harris

Role: Car chief

Age: 28

Hometown: Maypearl, Texas

Residence: Denver

Ryan Kelly

Role: IT specialist

Age: 32

Hometown: London, Ontario

Residence: Denver

Nick Kerlin

Role: Shock specialist

Age: 32

Hometown: Old Ford, Ohio

Residence: Denver

Chris “Cowboy” Moyher

Role: Rear-end mechanic

Age: 40

Hometown: Naugatuck, Conn.

Residence: Strasburg

Other road crew based in Denver

Tommy DiBlasi (tire specialist); Gary Frost, Todd Carmichael and Nino Venezia (mechanics); Chuck Lemay and Roy Miller (truckers, general assignment)

Note: Does not include pit- stop crew