Sometimes, being born with a silver spoon in your mouth isn’t that great. You can choke on it. Ty Gibbs, the grandson of Joe Gibbs, can tell you all about that.
The elder Gibbs owns one of the most – if not the most – competitive teams in NASCAR. Ty Gibbs is in his fourth fulltime season driving for his grandfather and recently won his first Cup race at Bristol.
But from the start, he has had to listen to a lot of outside noise. In 2023, Gibbs took over the car driven by Kyle Busch, one of NASCAR’s all-time greats.
While the official word was that they simply couldn’t reach agreement on a new contract, many felt that Busch was eased out in order to make room for Ty Gibbs.
The whispers, and sometimes outright accusations of preferential treatment, continued from there, culminating last year when Chris Gabehart, formerly Joe Gibbs Racing’s director of competition, and Gibbs got into a bitter law suit.
At one point, Gabehart claimed Ty Gibbs got special privileges, like not having to go to competition meetings, because he was the owner’s grandson.
For his part, the younger Gibbs has mostly chosen to ignore his critics, pretty much keeping to himself and staying off social media. But he discussed the issue on NASCAR’s media site following the win at Bristol.
“I truly have a passion and love for racing,” Gibbs commented. “People can say what they want, can say false things. I don’t really have an issue with it.
“I’m not big on social media. I just love racing cars. I’m in a blessed position to do this, trying to maximize my resources. I really love it. It (racing) overcomes that (the criticism).” Gibbs has not let his detractors get him down. It took him a while to win his first race, which only added to the pressure. But he was good with it.
“I don’t care about them,” he said. “I guess it’s something for them to focus on. After today (the win at Bristol) I guess they’re going to have to focus on something else.
“I feel like I knew I was capable of doing it (winning a race),” Gibbs remarked. “It’s obviously about putting it together. Me and Tyler (crew chief Tyler Allen) knew the whole way it was going to end up where it is now. I think we both had the same mindset about it.
“I’ve stayed after it (trying to win) the whole time,” Gibbs continued. “Obviously people are going to say false things, like how I wasn’t present at meetings. I’ve been the same the whole time, just to clear that up.
“We’ve had a ton of fun this year,” Gibbs went on. “Tyler has been such a great crew chief. People are going to stir stuff up in the media. I might not be the most-liked person, so everybody’s going to jump on it.
“Tyler is a very mentally strong crew chief,” Gibbs said. “To have him as my guy means a lot to me. He has my back, I have his back. We’re both young guys chasing it (success) so we stuck together threw it (the hard times). “People can doubt us as much as they want until we get in the spot to do it. We hammered down and won.
“Because they don’t have much going on, people are going to talk,” Gibbs said. “That’s what’s going to happen. We’ve been in all the meetings, hammering down, working hard, pushing teammates to the win like last year at Talladega, stuff like that.”
In the fall race at Talladega last year, Gibbs got behind Chase Briscoe and helped him stay in first place.
“I’ve always had fun racing,” Gibbs said. “I think that’s taken out of context (that he didn’t enjoy it). I think I truly enjoy the position I’m in, obviously, being around such a great group of people is so much fun.
“These guys love racing as much as I do, or even more, and I know I love it a lot. Having that is super important.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my team. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Tyler (Allen). Tyler is the best person I could work with and there are a lot of other people involved, too,” Gibbs concluded.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Kansas: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Chase Briscoe. Last year’s winner at Kansas: Kyle larson. Top five at Kansas last year: 1-Larson, 2-Christopher Bell, 3-Dave Blaney, 4-Briscoe, 5-Alex Bowman.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Bristol picks: 1-Ty Gibbs, 2-Blaney, 3-Hamlin. Last week’s Bristol winner: Gibbs. OGS season record: 3-3.
OGS competition index after six races: 1-Reddick 158 points, 2-Hamlin 151, 3-Blaney 143, 4-Gibbs 123, 5-Bell 115, 6-Chase Elliott 102, 7-Larson 96, 8-Brad Keselowski 63, 9-William Byron 46, 10-Joey Logano 22.
OGS top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks most similar to Kansas) 1-Hamlin 75, 2-Reddick 63, Keselowski 63, 4-Elliott 41, 5-Byron 34, 6-Blaney 31, 7-Bell 24, 8-Carson Hocevar 20, 9-Larson 13, 10-Gibbs 10, Austin Cindric 10.
