Hamlin and Gibbs: Tension at JGR after NASCAR race incident

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – After the incident between teammates Denny Hamlin and Ty Gibbs in last week’s race, calm has returned to the Joe Gibbs Racing team. Hamlin, who is competing in the playoffs for his first Cup Series championship, and Gibbs, grandson of team owner Joe Gibbs, were involved in a crash on the track. After the contact, Hamlin questioned via the team radio whether the organization was afraid to give orders to the 22-year-old young driver.

On Saturday, a day before the race at Kansas Speedway, Hamlin revealed that all parties involved had the opportunity to express their views in the week’s competition meeting. The three-time Daytona 500 champion admitted he got carried away, saying: “I definitely got too heated and it was too far on my part”.

There are things I should have done differently.

Denny Hamlin

Christopher Bell, JGR teammate, pointed out that the message was clear and didn’t need to be verbalized about how Toyota drivers should compete with each other at this time of year, with six races remaining to crown the Cup champion.

We shouldn’t crash into each other. That was very clear and obviously incorrect and I hope it doesn’t happen again. I think it was already clear to us before, and we just need to respect each other.

Christopher Bell

Meanwhile, Chase Briscoe, a JGR driver, achieved his seventh pole position of the year, leading the grid on Sunday in Kansas. Briscoe and Hamlin will share the front row. Briscoe’s seven poles are the most in a single season since 2017.

Briscoe and Hamlin are likely to compete cleanly at the start, something that Kyle Larson, a Hendrick Motorsports driver, believes is the right thing to do.

Larson commented that the expectations of how Hendrick’s drivers should compete with each other are clearly defined and are evident on the track every week.

I think you’re always looking for what you can do to make things a little easier on your teammates. Television probably doesn’t even see the teamwork that happens, but last week, Alex Bowman did me a lot of favors at the end of the first stage. I passed him and then I was running out of energy.

Kyle Larson

Larson added that he expects an improvement in the relationship between the JGR drivers after the week’s conversations.