What’s happening?

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?

The start of the season

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.

What could have caused this?

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.

What do you think about all this? Let us know on Discord or X what your take is, and don’t forget you can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.