Gibbs’ greatness extends from Lombardi Trophy to checkered flag

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - And everybody thought Joe Gibbs was crazy.

Well, maybe not crazy, but many people expected a big drop-off in performance when Joe Gibbs Racing announced it was switching from powerhouse manufacturer Chevrolet to newcomer Toyota this season.

What nobody knew at the time was what a great move it would turn out to be.

As Kyle Busch rolled into Victory Lane for the second consecutive night at Chicagoland Speedway in the LifeLock 400 on Saturday, it raised JGR’s win total to eight in the Sprint Cup Series, along with an incredible 13 checkered flags in 20 races in the Nationwide division.

A year ago, Toyota teams struggled just to qualify for races. In the seven months since making the switch, JGR has set the benchmark not just for the other Toyota teams, but for the entire series — and nobody is more surprised than Gibbs.

“Could I have guessed that we would have got off to this kind of start this year? No,” Gibbs said at Chicagoland. “The only thing I can attribute it to is Toyota and us and the other teammates — everybody has worked together, worked hard — and we’ve gotten off to a start that I wouldn’t have envisioned.”

Gibbs’ teams have performed so well, NASCAR officials are pulling engines out of Nationwide and Cup cars to make sure Toyota is not cheating.

So how did Joe Gibbs Racing get so good, so quickly?

“He actually claims it’s because he left football and came back to the team,” joked J.D. Gibbs, JGR’s president, about his father. “That’s the real reason, just so you know.”

There is an element of truth to that statement, though. Gibbs was one of the more understated personalities in the NFL, but he had an uncanny ability to motivate those around him — a major reason his teams won three Super Bowls. But since moving to NASCAR, his full-time presence gave his teams much-needed confidence to build faster cars.

“There’s so many great guys and girls at Joe Gibbs Racing that work so hard every week,” Busch said. “Whether they are in the marketing department, the machine shop, anywhere — they are there for a reason and that’s to win and win championships.”

It’s the kind of atmosphere in which Gibbs thrives, regardless of what manufacturer ‘s logo is on the hood.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen. You could be on top of the heap one day and be on the bottom the next,” Gibbs said. “So you’d better be getting after it, because if you are standing still, you are falling behind.”

Whether you view Gibbs as brilliant, simply lucky or maybe just a little crazy, his move to Toyota has paid off. The coach continues to do in NASCAR what he did in football: He makes the right decision at the right time.

Get up to speed on the latest in NASCAR — listen to Wilson’s Race Report every weeknight at 8:20 on 93.1 WPOC

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