HEMBREE: Gibbs’ Adventure Reaches 100

Sprint Cup

HEMBREE: Gibbs’ Adventure Reaches 100

From kickoff to latest victory, JGR has written its name across racing…

Mike Hembree | Posted September 24, 2012 Loudon, NH

Team owner Joe Gibbs has reason to smile. (Photo: Getty Images)

The announcement by Joe Gibbs wasn’t entirely unexpected. He was going stock car racing, he said, and in a big way.

His first season would be 1992, and Dale Jarrett would be the driver. Crew chief Jimmy Makar would be the central shop figure and the builder of the team, from the purchase of the first box of tools to the hiring of personnel.

Although Jarrett and Makar certainly were accomplished and respected individuals within NASCAR circles, it remained possible to find some skepticism about the new deal in garage areas. Old-line NASCAR types had seen would-be players from outside the sport come and go over the years – people with big dreams, money to spend and the idea they could make inroads quickly in a very insular sport.

Most soon found their way to the exits, tails bucked firmly between their legs and their bank accounts significantly reduced.

Gibbs came into the sport having had huge success in the National Football League, and he was perhaps more quickly accepted along pit road for that fact. Additionally, Gibbs had done well with a team – the Washington Redskins, where he remained the coach as he launched a NASCAR team – historically popular among NASCAR lifers.

Still, there was some thinking that Gibbs would find a tough road, and some even nodded toward him sympathetically, as in, “Poor guy, he seems like a nice man, but he has no idea what he’s getting into.”

All of that seems rather silly now. On Sunday, in the sort of beating rarely seen in Sprint Cup racing, JGR driver Denny Hamlin embarrassed the rest of the field and won the Sylvania 300 in a matchup similar to what might happen if Alabama lined up against the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Hamlin’s victory, in addition to its importance in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, marked the latest landmark for the race team Gibbs started on a wing and a prayer 21 years ago – its 100th Sprint Cup victory.

Folks stopped feeling sympathetic toward Joe Gibbs long ago.

Turns out he was serious about this racing thing.

He got it into more or less as a family adventure, a sport/business he could share with sons J.D. and Coy. It could have been just a plaything, something the Gibbses did between watching and/or coaching football games, but Joe, accustomed to succeeding at chosen endeavors, steadily built the team into a contender, and then a champion.

In its second season, JGR won the Daytona 500. Jarrett rolled to an emotional win, one most pleasantly remembered for Ned Jarrett urging his son across the finish line from the CBS broadcast booth. But it also was the moment that gave new definition to Gibbs’ racing efforts and made the team a real threat.

The team has won at least one race in every season since Jarrett’s breakthrough, and the championships started in 2000, when Bobby Labonte gave Gibbs a Cup trophy to add to his Super Bowl collection. Tony Stewart followed with JGR championships in 2002 and 2005.

Hamlin took his boss to the century mark in Cup victories Sunday and has a very good chance to give Gibbs his fourth Cup title this year.

Not a bad racing record for a football coach.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Hembree

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