NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
  • Peg It on GarageMonkey
CUP: JGR’s Tale Of Two Engines
Teammates Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch will have different engine packages for the rest of the season...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted August 18, 2011   Charlotte, NC
Joe Gibbs Racing president J.D. Gibbs was Thursday night's featured guest on NASCAR Race Hub. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
With the Chase for the Sprint Cup rapidly approaching, it appears Joe Gibbs Racing will place two drivers in NASCAR’s championship round. And those two drivers will have different engine packages in the Chase.

In an exclusive interview with SPEED.com Thursday afternoon, team president J.D. Gibbs said Denny Hamlin will run engines built by Toyota’s racing division, TRD, U.S.A., while Kyle Busch and Joey Logano will finish out the 2011 campaign with the same JGR-built engines they’ve used all season.

Busch, the current NASCAR Sprint Cup points leader, is a virtual lock for the Chase, and Hamlin holds down the first of two wild-card positions. Realistically, Logano would have to win two of the next four races to make the Chase.

So far this season, JGR has suffered 11 engine failures, an uncommonly high number for the normally reliable team.

“This week, we’re going to do the TRD piece for Denny, who has had more motor issues this year than any of the other guys,” said Gibbs. “The other guys (Busch and Logano) don’t want to do it (until 2012) and are good to finish out the year. Hopefully, this speeds up the process.”

The TRD and JGR motors are not directly interchangeable, which means additional work for Hamlin’s crew to convert the front ends of his cars to accept the TRD motors. Will using TRD motors prove to be an advantage or disadvantage for Hamlin vs. his teammates? That remains to be seen.

Last week, JGR and TRD announced that they would merge engine operations for 2012.

“Over the past three years, it’s come closer and closer and closer motor-wise,” Gibbs said. “Now it’s just sort of finalizing that process. A lot of it, we figured, ‘Hey, they’ll have five teams, we have five teams, we’ll pick up a couple of lease programs.’ Well, we don’t. The sport’s a little different. So we’ve got to figure out how do we utilize the best of what we have with the best of what they have and combine them? That’s sort of the process we’re going through.”

“We’re doing one thing and those guys (TRD) are doing one thing and anytime you try to combine them, it’s so hard to do that because you’re so different that everybody is going to have to change something,” said Busch. “I think it’s going to be beneficial for all of us. I’m looking forward to when that comes about next year.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
tom_jensen's avatar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Jensen

MORE BY THIS AUTHOR
Advertising | Jobs | Feedback | FAQ | Terms of Use | NEW Privacy Policy | Ad Choices | Site Map
Fox Sports | FUEL TV | FX Network | National Geographic | IGN | AskMen
The Motor Sports Authority, SPEED and associated logos are registered trademarks of Speed Channel Inc.
All Rights Reserved © Speed Channel, Inc. 2013

All external links will open in a new browser window. SPEED.com does not endorse external sites.