Ty Gibbs leaves Los Angeles with familiar rivalry after ‘good showing’
By Zach Sturniolo
NASCAR.com
Published:
4 Minute Read
LOS ANGELES — Bent fenders, heated discussions and an impressive performance encompassed a thrilling Saturday night in Southern California for Ty Gibbs.
Gibbs, the 21-year-old sophomore driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, led a race-high 84 laps in the exhibition Busch Light Clash at the famed Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. An ill-fated restart from the lead with 10 laps to go resulted in him relinquishing the lead to teammate Denny Hamlin, however, running Joey Logano wide and ultimately spinning out before taking the checkered flag in 18th place, one lap down.
The 2023 Sunoco Rookie of the Year, Gibbs showed he still has some seasoning to do when it comes to racing the sport’s veterans. On the penultimate restart, his No. 54 Toyota lined up first on the inside row alongside Logano’s No. 22 Ford. Gibbs washed high from the center of Turns 1 and 2, though, nearly running Logano into the fence and allowing Hamlin, Gibbs’ teammate, to sneak low and snag the lead.
It was a disappointing end to an otherwise solid 2024 debut that saw him ahead of the field by nearly three seconds at times around the temporary 0.25-mile oval.
“It just was unfortunate,” Gibbs said. “I guess I’ve got to get better at restarts. My team brought me a great car as we saw and they did a great job. So it was a good showing.”
Logano, entering his 16th full-time season in the NASCAR Cup Series, didn’t take kindly to Gibbs’ near brush. The two have had previous on-track encounters that have left Logano frustrated, coming to a head at the 0.526-mile Martinsville Speedway, where Logano spun Gibbs around last October. Saturday night, Logano stormed to the No. 54 team’s hauler and confronted Gibbs, leading to a fiery conversation in the garage area.
“He’s just mad that I ran him up,” Gibbs explained. “But if you go back and look at the replay, the 12 (Ryan Blaney, Logano’s teammate) kind of chucks him out of the way, too. So it’s just hard racing at the end. This place is really hard to get your tires warm once the caution comes out, as we all see with everybody sliding around. So I just got in there deep and washed up into him and then we just kind of got all tangled up after that.
“He just came over and said that to me in a bunch of different words, but I knew what happened.”
Logano began his career at Joe Gibbs Racing, making his first Cup start in 2008 when Gibbs, the grandson of team owner Joe Gibbs, was only 6 years old. Now a two-time champion, Logano often found himself frustrating the veterans as he settled into the sport’s top echelon. Saturday night showed him on the opposite end of that spectrum.
“He just used me up, all the way to the wall,” Logano told NASCAR.com. “There’s a fine line of kind of pushing each other up a little bit if you’re racing for the win, but using me up with the history that he has with me is not a good idea for him.”
Zach Sturniolo | NASCAR.com
Despite leaving Los Angeles with a not-so-new enemy, Gibbs’ performance ultimately proved his first win may be in the not-so-distant future. At Bristol Motor Speedway last fall, Gibbs led a career-best 102 laps on his way to a fifth-place finish. Those performances are becoming less surprising each week, with his growth evident to crew chief Chris Gayle.
“I think it just shows his determination this year,” Gayle told NASCAR.com. “We’ve talked about it a little bit. He really feels comfortable now after having a full year under his belt in these cars. And so, you know, I expect runs like this all the time. I mean, he does, too. So that’s what should happen.”
And as for a slight mistake that proved costly late? No worries inside the No. 54 team’s camp.
“I think right now he’s beating himself up probably from that last restart,” Gayle said. “So we’ll just wrap our arm around him, let him know that — go look at Chase Elliott and how many seconds he had before he finally broke through. I know Ty wants to be a perfectionist, and he wants to nail them all. So we won’t have to say much to him. He’ll be rough on himself and we’ll go to Daytona and try to win.”
And to Gayle’s point – for what it’s worth, Elliott notoriously had eight second-place finishes before his inaugural Cup win. Now a series champion, Elliott has visited Victory Lane 18 times in his career. Gibbs’ best career finish so far: fourth-place at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course.
