“I just want to make it happen,” Ty Gibbs said in early March. Joe Gibbs’ grandson has been hoping against hope that his NASCAR Cup Series season finally hit the positive turn it needs. Between Atlanta and Homestead, Gibbs recorded five finishes outside the top 20. However, things took a brighter look with his first top-15 finish in Martinsville. And Darlington visibly displayed the positive result of some new and good influence – harnessed from Kevin Harvick’s former No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing team.
During the off-season, Joe Gibbs Racing underwent a massive overhaul. After missing out on the Championship 4 for the first time since 2014, the team got into a war footing. The changes have not stopped even now, 8 races into the season – and Ty Gibbs is feeling confident.
A glimmer of hope for Ty Gibbs?
Well, that is long overdue for the 22-year-old racer. The last time Ty Gibbs was a dominant force was in 2022 when he won the Xfinity Series championship. In his 2023 rookie season in the Cup Series, 4 top-fives and 10 top-tens led him to 18th place in the championship standings. In 2024, he could eke out 16th place after breaking into the playoffs for the first time. So to boost that improvement streak and to prove his doubters wrong, Ty Gibbs welcomed a new crew member recently. Ahead of the Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, the No. 54 team roped in championship-winning car chief Robert “Cheddar” Smith.
Smith spent 12 years working in SHR, notably serving as the car chief when Kevin Harvick clinched the 2014 Cup Series championship. Most recently, he was with the No. 7 Spire Motorsports team. In a pre-race presser at Bristol Motor Speedway, Ty Gibbs counted himself and his team lucky for getting a valuable asset like Robert Smith. “Yeah, it’s really important, especially for the guys as well, you know, having somebody…I feel like our guys are relatively new and are new to the sport and to Cup racing. So it’s definitely very valuable to have a veteran guy that’s been, ‘I’m doing it for a long time and I have a lot of great success and great experience to be along with our team.’ It’s really, really helpful.”
The result is already visible – Ty Gibbs fetched his season’s first top-ten finish at Darlington Raceway. The driver also has good prospects heading into Bristol, where he owns two top 10s with a finish of ninth in this race a year ago. So Robert Smith may propel him to a better finish this time, as JGR’s competition director Chris Gabehart is super confident. “It’s a great opportunity to get someone with that level of experience, know-how, tenure, and demeanor…I think Cheddar’s leadership goes without saying. I think it’s going to add a ton of depth to the team and help [Crew Chief] Tyler [Allen], and the other mechanics and engineers to sort of find their way, and have a great presence at the window net so to speak for Ty, which I think is very important.”
Hence Ty Gibbs may be on his way to find his 2025 mojo. In this way, he becomes part of a larger change in JGR – which seemed shocking at first but is now turning out to be golden.
The leap of faith is working out
At the end of the 2024 season, Denny Hamlin received a jaw-dropping shock about his team. His long-time crew chief Chris Gabehart – with whom he won 22 Cup Series races across 6 seasons – was moving to a new role. Ripples of disappointment pervaded the NASCAR community and Hamlin himself. However, it also meant that Gabehart had a bigger role now as the competition director. Instead of overseeing just Hamlin’s team, he now oversees the performance of all four of JGR’s teams. The results have been apparent – Christopher Bell’s No. 20 team clinched three back-to-back victories this season, a feat unheard of in the Next-Gen era. Then Denny Hamlin jumped back into Victory Lane as well, winning both in Martinsville and Darlington.
So Ty Gibbs’ positive crew shuffle is a result of Chris Gabehart’s sense of good judgment. According to Chris Gayle, the new 11 crew chief, nothing has changed since last season. Instead, Gabehart has expanded his reach to all of JGR, as Gayle explained in his consolation of Denny Hamlin. “I can understand he has a huge rapport and success with Gabehart, so any change in his mind late in his career is trepidation about, well, how’s this going to be, right?…There were lots of times that the 54 car may have had as good a car as the 11 car…It’s not like we’re losing any of the information and processes with how things are done. No one’s leaving. Gabehart’s shifting to this role and going to try to lean on all four teams a little better.”
Evidently, Ty Gibbs’ change for the better is a result of Chris Gabehart’s influence. With Kevin Harvick’s old aide on the No. 54 team, Gibbs may soar to the limits of his potential.
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