What is Joe Gibbs Racing?

There have been several instances of people switching from one sport to another, be it an athlete, a coach, or anyone else related to a particular sport. The switch is often challenging and more often than not, the person making the switch fails to make an impact in the second sport they had chosen.

But once in a while, there comes a person who earns their accolades no matter where they go and becomes immortalized in more than one discipline. That is the story of former football coach Joe Gibbs, who made the switch to NASCAR and created one of the most successful Cup and Xfinity Series teams of all time, Joe Gibbs Racing.

The history of Joe Gibbs Racing

When the team was founded in 1992, there was a lot of skepticism around it. After all, Joe Gibbs had been a football man all his life. What would he know of auto racing to be successful? However, after 8 years of toiling away since its inception, JGR struck gold when it defied the odds to win the NASCAR Cup Series with Bobby Labonte in 2000. The team was always run by Gibbs and his son JD Gibbs.

After the latter's untimely passing in 2019, his father has been running things. The team began its journey with Chevrolet from 1992 to 1996 before moving on to Pontiac for 6 seasons. They then again moved back to Chevy in 2003 till 2007. However, since 2007, they have been operating as a Toyota team and have earned much success from the partnership.

Why did Joe Gibbs form a NASCAR team?

The one question that has perplexed both motorsports and football fans is why Joe Gibbs decided to start a race team in the first place. He was a highly successful coach during his time with the Washington Commanders as he guided them to three Superbowl victories and was twice named coach of the year in the NFL. So why make such a risky jump? Well, it turns out that his son JD Gibbs had a big role to play in it.

Despite his dad being a football coach, JD was in awe of motorsports more than football. He wanted his father to do something in that discipline and eventually, the Washington coach caved in and formed Joe Gibbs Racing in 1992, something which he had earlier called "a dream on a sheet of paper".

The team struggled in its early days as one would expect but Joe Gibbs never gave up. He kept at it for years and finally, after eight years of tireless work, JGR won their first Cup Series championship. The team then ushered in a golden era during which they won three championships in six years with Labonte and Tony Stewart, solidifying their place in the world of motor racing. Then came a decade-long title drought in the Cup after which Kyle Busch led the team to two more Cup Series championships (2015, 2019). The team has also won four Xfinity Series and one ARCA title.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s net worth 2024

Being one of the most successful teams in NASCAR with five Cup and four Xfinity Series championships, it is no wonder that Joe Gibbs Racing is worth quite a lot. There are no official figures or reports about the team's net worth in 2024 but as per Forbes, in 2020, the legendary race team was worth $230 million. This is a number that has certainly risen in the past four years and the present value of the team must be a lot more than that.

Joe Gibbs Racing drivers

The legendary NASCAR team currently operates with four full-time cars in the Cup Series - #11 (Denny Hamlin), #19 (Martin Triuex Jr), #20 (Christopher Bell), and #54 (Ty Gibbs). In the Xfinity Series, the team has two full-time cars, the #18 of Sheldon Creed and the #81 of Chandler Smith. When it comes to the Cup Series, the team has seen several great racers, all of who has made the current numbers that the teams are running legendary.

As far as the #11 is concerned, the man who made that number relevant in NASCAR's biggest competition in the modern era is Denny Hamlin. The motorsports veteran might not have won the Cup so far in his career but there is certainly no taking away from the 50-plus race wins he has had, including three Daytona 500 wins. The 43-year-old is in the twilight years of his career and knows that he will have to win it pretty soon if he does not want to be called the best racer to never win the Cup Series in the sport's history.

The story of the #19 car is similar to that of the #11 in the sense that it is an incredibly strong outfit. They even have former Cup Series champion(2017) Martin Truex Jr sitting behind its wheel. However, the veteran has not been able to replicate his 2017 success with the team yet, and much like Hamlin, he too is in the twilight stages of his career.

Things get interesting with the #20 car as it is one with immense history. The #20 car has seen it all and won it all. During the team's most successful era during the early 2000s, Tony Stewart stepped up and won two Cup Series championships. Smoke's title wins put the team on the map and Joe Gibbs has never looked back since. Currently, the driver of the #20 is Christopher Bell. The team has also seen legends like Joey Logano, Matt Kenseth, and Erik Jones race in it.

But perhaps the most iconic car number belongs to Ty Gibbs, or what it used to be numbered back in the day. The #54 was the #18 car back when Kyle Busch was a racer in the team. It was the first car that Joe Gibbs fielded when he first started the team and it has produced world champions like Rowdy and the team's first-ever Cup winner, Bobby Labone. After Busch left the team for Richard Childress Racing at the end of 2022, Ty Gibbs took his place and his car was renumbered #54.

Joe Gibbs Racing partnerships and endorsements

They might be a newer team compared to the likes of Hendricks Motorsports and Richard Childress Racing, but Joe Gibbs Racing is one of the biggest teams in NASCAR today. That means they have some of the biggest companies in the world backing them as sponsors to win championships like the Cup and the Xfinity Series. These sponsors include the likes of Coca-Cola, FedEx, Interstate Batteries, Monster Energy, Bass Pro Shops, Mavis Tires, and DeWalt to name a few.

FedEx has become synonymous with the #11 team of Denny Hamlin. The veteran NASCAR racer has been a partner of the brand for several years now and it doesn't seem like their time together will end anytime soon. The only thing that FedEx would want at this point more than anything is for Hamlim to win a Cup Series championship and become a true legend of the sport. Bass Pro Shops, the fishing equipment company has been in NASCAR for several years now and they also sponsor JGR's Martin Truex Jr. Joe Gibbs' son, Ty, is sponsored by Monster Energy and DeWalt is a partner of the#20 team of Christopher Bell.

Overall, it is safe to say that the sponsorship situation is well thought out and distributed among JGR's four full-time Cup racers. Despite all of that, team owner Gibbs sold a small part of his organization in 2023.

Joe Gibbs Racing sells team’s minority stake

The news was broken in June of 2023 that Joe Gibbs had sold a minority stake in Joe Gibbs Racing to Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HSBE) and Arctos Partners. As part of the new deal, the 83-year-old NASCAR team owner would become a limited partner in HSBE. “Josh Harris, David Blitzer, and their entire team have a vision that has delivered winning franchises in basketball, hockey, soccer, and youth sports. Their teams are among the most successful in their leagues in growing audience and sponsorship, and their commitment to the communities they work in is unparalleled. I am excited to join the HBSE family and to have their support in growing Joe Gibbs Racing,” the 83-year-old said after the sale as per RACER.

Joe Gibbs Racing's major achievements and awards

JGR is one of the most successful teams in NASCAR today with five championship wins in the NASCAR Cup Series. Bobby Labonte won the first title in the year 2000, followed by Tony Stewart who won the title twice in 2002 and 2005. The team then had to wait for 10 years before they got their fourth championship win with Kyle Busch in 2015 and Rowdy doubled his tally only four years later. When it comes to the Xfinity Series, the team has been almost equally as successful as in the Cup Series. Joe Gibbs Racing has won four Xfinity Series titles in 2009, 2016, 2021, and 2022. They also have an ARCA title to their name which was accomplished in 2021.

Joe Gibbs Racing controversy

They may be a fan-favorite team in NASCAR today but Joe Gibbs Racing was at the center of one of the biggest controversies in the sport's recent history. In the year 2008, the organizers had mandated that teams, especially ones with Toyota, would run smaller restrictor plates to cut horsepower. To check if teams adhered to the mandate, NASCAR used a dynamometer to measure the HP of many cars at Michigan in the Nationwide Series. It was found that a couple of JGR cars had been utilizing magnets to manipulate the throttle pedals to stop the accelerator from opening fully. Two drivers and the teams saw 150 points deducted and after an internal investigation, seven crew members were indefinitely suspended.

But that's not all JGR has been criticized for. The five-time Cup Series champions were accused of playing a big role in the shutting down of smaller race teams like Furniture Row Racing in 2018 and Leavine Family Racing in 2020. Both of those teams had entered into a technical alliance with JGR and Toyota Racing Development.

The way Kyle Busch left the team in 2023 was also quite questionable. According to Rowdy, the team did not have any sponsorship in place after Mars and M&Ms pulled out of their deals at the end of the 2022 season. The team essentially wanted the two-time Cup Series champion to run an unsponsored car and that just did not sit well with him. “We got to call everybody else.’ … [Instead] they offered me a contract to race there and they weren’t going to have sponsorship on the car, but I didn’t feel like that was fair for the 15 years that I was there; I didn’t want Joe putting his own money into the program," the NASCAR veteran had said later on.

Joe Gibbs Racing loses its co-owner

He may be one of the most successful team owners in NASCAR today but the struggles Joe Gibbs has had to go through, especially recently, have been unthinkable. Joe Gibbs Racing was founded thanks to his son JD Gibbs and both JD and his brother Coy helped run the team with their dad and were co-owners. Unfortunately, they both passed away in a span of a little over 3 years.

In 2019, JD Gibbs passed away after four years of battling "conditions related to brain function". As the years went by, it became more and more evident that his health was deteriorating yet he put up a valiant fight from 2015 to 2019. In 2022, the night Ty Gibbs won the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship, his father and Joe Gibbs' other son, Coy Gibbs, also passed away in his sleep and the cause of his death has not yet been announced. The following day was the Cup Series finale and the drivers involved with JGR at the time and in the past paid a heartfelt tribute to the late owner. One can only imagine what Ty must have been going through.

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