Joe Gibbs Racing’s youngest driver, Ty Gibbs, began the season on a hot streak. Though winless, Gibbs was a consistent top-ten finisher. However, he now finds himself outside the top ten in points, so what happened?
Gibbs entered 2024 as a top candidate for a breakout season. After solid runs and an 18th-place points finish last season, Gibbs looked to gain a comfortable position at JGR.
A poor finish at Daytona didn’t derail the start of Gibbs’s season. After Atlanta, Gibbs began a five-race top-ten streak, which saw Gibbs climb as high as second in the points.
Gibbs began a monumental falloff at the Richmond spring race. While a 16th-place finish would be his second-worst of the season thus far, this statistic would soon change.
Since then, in 16 races in total, Gibbs has just four top-tens and has fallen to 11th in points. With just three races until the playoffs, Gibbs finds himself 18 points over the cut line, comfortable but not as comfortable as he would want to be.
The last ten races have not been good for Gibbs either. The second-year driver’s average finish is 19.3, worse than that of drivers Austin Cindric and Todd Gilliland, who Gibbs is in front of in regular season points.
Gibbs’ fall off has not been due to a lack of speed, qualifying 9.6 in those previously mentioned last ten races. Nor has it been an issue of not finishing races, as Gibbs only has two DNFs in this short time and has only seven nonlead lap finishes all year.
In fact, Gibbs earned a career-best finish of second at Darlington during this stretch after Gibbs avoided the late collision between Chris Buescher and Tyler Reddick.
It looks to be another case of a young driver going through a rough patch. While Gibbs is showing speed, the results just aren’t there. Gibbs appears to be another proven talent in a hole that many young drivers have found themselves in in past seasons.
For example, take William Byron. The Hendrick Motorsports driver and 13-time Cup Series winner is coming off a championship-caliber season. That’s after a five-year stretch in which Byron scored less than ten top-fives in four seasons.
Like Gibbs, Byron was an Xfinity Series Champion and a Rookie of The Year. But what Byron supplies Gibbs with is the story of a driver who some thought was called up too early but is now consistently at the front of the field.
Gibbs is still running well at times, with solid runs at the challenging Chicago Street Circuit and darring Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But Gibbs is notably still winless two years into his career; for a driver like Tyler Reddick, that first win gave him much-needed momentum.
Whether it’s time he needs or to get a win under his belt, Gibbs must find that early-season momentum again. With three races to go, locking himself into the Playoffs could spark a new life as the reset gives the young driver a fresh slate.
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On February 17, Ubisoft released a trailer that confirmed that NASCAR would be included in The Crew Motorfest’s next season update. Details were limited at the time, but in a press release issued today, Ubisoft revealed the full details of the update ahead of its March 4 launch.
Ubisoft says drafting will affect car speed and help save fuel, implying that drafting will be a huge factor in the game, at least with these cars. You can check out this and much more on Ubisoft’s official post linked below
Earlier this Tuesday, the official The Crew Motorfest account clarified confusion around the NASCAR bundles. The Crew Credit (CC) bundles only include cosmetic team liveries, not additional cars. The 3 base Next Gen cars (Ford Mustang Dark Horse, Toyota Camry XSE, and Chevrolet ZL1) are part of the free Season 9 update and can be purchased separately.
Mitch Rasmussen, NASCAR’s Senior Director of Interactive, said in the press release:
We’re excited to bring our iconic brand to life in The Crew Motorfest. This collaboration represents another important step in our strategy to bring NASCAR into the digital spaces and places where next generation fans spend their time, giving players new ways to interact with the culture and communities they love.
The content arrives as part of Year 3 Season 9 and is officially licensed by NASCAR. You can watch the first trailer and learn more in the article linked below
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Four road courses on the schedule, and somehow that’s enough to spark one of the biggest debates in the garage. After recent comments from Brad Keselowski questioning the business value of road racing, the conversation has picked up serious steam. Is NASCAR leaning too far into it, or is the current balance about right?
There are valid points on both sides, from sponsorship realities to fan traditions to competitive diversity. Some tracks have gained traction. Others have struggled. The question isn’t just whether road courses belong, but how many make sense within a 36-race season. It’s less about extremes and more about direction. And with future schedule changes always looming, this debate probably isn’t settled anytime soon.
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Corey Day’s run-in with Connor Zilisch at Circuit of the Americas became one of the most discussed incidents from Saturday’s race, even drawing a response from Denny Hamlin as well, who this week talked about his support for Zilisch.
During the race, Zilisch dealt with brake trouble on his No. 1 Chevrolet but worked his way forward from the rear of the field, advancing from P29 to P4 in the closing laps. With five laps remaining, he engaged in a battle with Hendrick Motorsports driver Corey Day as they exited Turn 2, holding the outside line. But as they contested the position, Day moved up behind him, contact occurred, and Zilisch spun off course to finish the race in P21.
After the contact, frustrated, Connor Zilisch initially referred to Day as an “absolute hack” on his radio, describing the clash as part of the latter’s racing pattern. But the JR Motorsports driver later tempered his comments, simply saying he expects an apology from the young Hendrick Motorsports driver.
Given that Zilisch declined to escalate the situation, on the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin credited him for calmly managing his response after the race, saying,
“Zillich was smart about this. He in his interview, he’s like, “I looked over at him thinking, come on over here. Come apologize.” And he said he just looked at him with a stare like, I don’t know what it is with these guys. Why, Why can’t they… youth?”
However, he questioned Day’s failure to issue an immediate apology. In fact, he said he was “floored” by Corey Day’s reaction, which involved staring at a frustrated Zilisch rather than apologizing.
The No. 11 JGR driver also raised questions about how Hendrick Motorsports evaluates developing drivers. Organizations invest with the expectation of returns measured in wins and titles, but when a driver continues to make visible mistakes, fans and especially other drivers will start to scrutinize. Hamlin pointed to the balance between development and production, asking how long it would hold.
The COTA incident was not the first time Day’s racing antics were questioned. Last week, during the Atlanta race, Day was involved in a multi-car crash on lap five after attempting a three-wide move that resulted in contact with Ryan Sieg. The move triggered a chain reaction that collected several cars.
Sieg responded over team radio, questioning both the decision and Day’s presence in the series.
Hamlin argued that drivers are allowed to make mistakes as part of growth. At teams with front-running equipment and title ambitions, time frames are shorter. But he questioned whether Day faces a deadline by season’s end or whether the assessment extends into the following year.
In Day’s case, results have not offset the incidents that have drawn attention. Hamlin referenced Kyle Larson as an example, noting that aggressive driving can lead to contact as well as wins.
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