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4 Burning Questions: Times Are Changing for JGR

1. How different will Joe Gibbs Racing look next season?

The last 48 hours have been Silly Season announcement after Silly Season announcement for Joe Gibbs Racing.

First, it was announced Oct. 16 that Taylor Gray will be the full-time driver for the team’s No. 54 NASCAR Xfinity Series car for 2025 after running a part-time Xfinity schedule this season.

Shortly after that, it was announced that 22-year-old Ty Gibbs will be dipping his toe into ownership, as he was announced as the listed owner for Gray’s No. 54 car starting next season.

See also
Taylor Gray Running Xfinity Full Time With JGR in 2025

On Oct. 17, the Campbell Soup Company — through its ties with Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, a minority owner of JGR — was revealed as serving as an official partner for the team and to promote several brands in its NASCAR program.

With Martin Truex Jr. out and Chase Briscoe in and longtime sponsor FedEx potentially on its way out, the team’s NASCAR Cup Series program will undergo significant changes, complete with new-look paint schemes and brands adorning its cars.

But all those changes pale in comparison to just how different its 2025 Xfinity lineup will look compared to this year.

The team is fielding four Xfinity entries this season, with two full-time drivers and two All-Star cars that feature a hodgepodge of Cup drivers, former Cuppers and part-time Xfinity drivers who are looking for more sponsorship and opportunities.

One of its full-time drivers, Sheldon Creed, is departing for Haas Factory Team at season’s end. In his place will be Brandon Jones, who makes an awkward return to JGR after two years of disappointing results at JR Motorsports.

The team’s other full-time driver, Chandler Smith, has won two races and is a serious threat for the championship after winning at Phoenix Raceway in March. And yet, there’s been no indication that he will return, even with the season almost over. Smith himself said that nothing was lined up next year when asked at Xfinity playoffs media day in late September.

Gray will join Jones as the team’s second full-time driver, which leaves two cars unaccounted for. William Sawalich looks poised to take a third car — even if part time — as the 18-year-old that has dominated the ARCA Menards Series circuit is currently scheduled to run the final three Xfinity races of the season with the team in his series debut.

That leaves Smith, Aric Almirola, the Truex brothers (Ryan and the soon-to-be retired-from-full-time Martin), Joe Graf Jr., Josh Bilicki, Toyota Cup drivers and any other potential hires jockeying for starts in either one or two cars next season.

Something will have to give, and it will be fascinating to see which drivers make the cut and which ones don’t as 2025 creeps closer and closer.

2. Illegal data sharing?

Silly Season moves aren’t the only thing JGR has been in the news for this week, and the other report is less than ideal.

While there is no official confirmation by NASCAR as of this moment, the Associated Press reported that NASCAR has been made aware of allegations that an engineer “accessed proprietary information and shared it with another team.”

The AP‘s anonymous sources alleged that the engineer is in a contract year for JGR and searching other opportunities and that a team with no cars in the playoffs “paid the engineer cash in exchange for setup information.”

If the team has no cars (i.e. not a single-car team) in the playoffs, that narrows the report down to six organizations: Kaulig Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Spire Motorsports, Legacy Motor Club, Front Row Motorsports and Rick Ware Racing.

However, if the phrase “no cars in the playoffs” is ambiguous and includes teams that made the playoffs but have already been eliminated by the time of the article, a wider net has to be cast.

The report also states that no complaints have been filed from either team, which is why no details have been released from NASCAR regarding the allegations.

Whether this report remains on the down low or gets blown wide open in the public eye remains to be seen.

3. Where does Kyle Larson rank all-time in NASCAR road racing?

When you think about the racing disciplines that Kyle Larson excels at, road course racing isn’t the one that first comes to mind.

But Oct. 14’s ass-kicking by Larson at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL marked his sixth Cup win on tracks with left and right turns, and he’s quickly established himself as one of, if not the premier road racer in the series.

Only 17 drivers in Cup history have amassed at least three road course wins, and Larson is now tied for fourth all time with Bobby Allison, Rusty Wallace and Ricky Rudd with six.

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Larson has scored two wins a piece at Sonoma Raceway, Watkins Glen International and the ROVAL, the three longest-tenured road courses on the Cup schedule.

He has also scored top-five finishes at Circuit of the Americas, Road America, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and the Chicago street course for an impressive and diverse pedigree.

He only trails Chase Elliott (seven), Tony Stewart (eight) and Jeff Gordon (nine) on the all-time list. While Elliott has the potential to keep running up the score himself, he has yet to win on a road course since the introduction of the Next Gen car.

With that in mind, Larson looks poised to either stand alone with the all-time record or rank behind Elliott just a few years down the road. Would 10 road course wins solidify Larson as the greatest road racer in NASCAR history?

Yes and no.

No, because Gordon and Stewart (as well as every other name on the all-time list that retired before 2021) only had two or three opportunities to win on a road course each season, so Stewart’s eight and Gordon’s nine hold a lot more weight than the five to six chances that drivers have on road courses in the present day.

At the same time, NASCAR road racing talent and competition is currently at its zenith. When there were only two road courses on the schedule each season (and none in the playoffs), drivers didn’t have to prioritize road course racing if it was a weak point; the road courses were just two unorthodox weekends surrounded by 34 ovals. Gordon and Stewart dominated those races, but would they have still dominated to the same degree if there were more road courses on the schedule, and thus more incentive for the field to catch up to them?

The late ’90s and early 2000s was also at a point when road course ringers in good equipment would regularly finish top five or top 10 in Cup races. It still happens today, but nowhere near as often as it used to. It now takes exceptional talents in their prime like multi-time Supercars champions Shane van Gisbergen and Marcos Ambrose or a multi-time Formula 1 winner and American open wheel champion in Juan Pablo Montoya to wheel a car to a win or a top finish.

Also chasing Larson each week is a plethora of road racing competition. Elliott, van Gisbergen, Truex, Kyle Busch, Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick and AJ Allmendinger have been the creme de la creme of NASCAR road racing at some point in time, and they’re all competing at once in the present day.

In short, Larson is top-10 all-time road racer in stock cars at the bare minimum. If he becomes the first driver to score 10 wins on the road and keeps adding to that total, it will be hard to not slot him into that No. 1 spot.

See also
2-Headed Monster: Has the Charlotte ROVAL Run Its Course?

4. Which Cup drivers will make the Championship 4?

Alex Bowman’s ROVAL disqualification ensures that the entire top eight in regular season points won’t make it to the Round of 8, but the addition of Joey Logano guarantees that every multi-time winner this season is still alive in the championship fight (Elliott, with one win at Texas Motor Speedway in April, is the only driver in the Round of 8 to not have multiple wins).

The next three races are shaping up to be a battle of the heavy weights. With three tracks that every driver is capable of winning at in some shape or fashion (Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville Speedway), there is zero margin for error. Here are my picks for the lucky four who will be duking it out for the title in Arizona desert on Nov. 10:

Kyle Larson

Larson is winning Vegas or Homestead, if not both. Book it.

He’s won the last two Las Vegas races and he has a remarkable four top twos and 404 laps led in the five Next Gen races at the track. Larson dominated at Homestead in 2022, leading nearly 200 laps en route to the win and he almost doubled up in South Florida last season until he made a comical error by crashing into the sand barriers on pit road while battling for the lead.

Even he doesn’t win either race, he’s 33 points to the good and will rack up so many stage points that his spot in the Championship 4 is essentially a formality.

Christopher Bell

He’s only 13 points above the cut, but Bell has prior wins at Homestead and Martinsville in the past and he came a lap away from defeating Larson at Las Vegas last October in a near-photo finish.

He leads all playoff drivers with an impressive average finish of 6.3 in the first two rounds (and an average finish of 5.5 in his last eight starts) and the No. 20 team is peaking at the right time to advance to Phoenix for the third consecutive year, so long as it stays out of trouble.

William Byron

William Byron had been hibernating throughout the summer with his last win coming at Circuit of the Americas in March. But he and the No. 24 team always find that extra gear come playoff time, as Byron breezed through the Round of 12 with finishes of second, third and third.

Byron, Larson, Logano and Denny Hamlin are the only playoff drivers that have scored wins at all three tracks in the Round of 8, and Byron is by far the youngest of the quartet to complete the hat trick. Just like Bell, Byron has the hot hand to advance as long as he stays out of trouble.

Denny Hamlin vs. Tyler Reddick

Last spot will come down to Hamlin and Reddick. Neither driver has had a playoffs to write home about, but Hamlin excels at all three tracks. Reddick will be a winning threat at both 1.5-mile tracks, as he finished second to Larson at Vegas in March and has multiple top-five finishes at Homestead by running the wall.

The two drivers still have winning speed, but the chaos of the first two rounds with two superspeedways and two road courses masked how well they can run. If Reddick wins either Vegas or Homestead, he’s the fourth one in. Hamlin will be the last one in if Reddick fails to win the first two, as the deciding race at Martinsville is one of Hamlin’s greatest strengths and one of Reddick’s greatest weaknesses.

Everyone Else

Team Penske duo Ryan Blaney and Logano have done well to make it here, but it’s the end of the road for them barring another miraculous run. The team did impress at the superspeedways (as is tradition) and at Kansas Speedway in late September, but they haven’t shown enough of that wow factor to go on a tear like Logano did in 2022 and Blaney did in 2023.

Elliott has led the series in average finish, but he’s only led 214 laps all season and a grand total of one in the playoffs. He’s exceled all year at top fiving, top 10ing and top 20ing the field to death, but that strategy won’t work when a driver needs to win, maximize stage points or run top five all day to make the Championship 4.

About the author

Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly columns include “Stat Sheet” and “4 Burning Questions.” He also writes commentary, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.

Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.

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Shayne

Seems like the team that would benefit the most from setup secrets is…

Legacy Motor Club. Jimmie Johnson doesn’t seem smart enough to run a Cup team. No reason in the world why his team should be doing so poorly. He’s running out of personnel to fire and/or throw under the bus.

Has Dollar Tree/Family Dollar been making their payments? It’s a terrible company and shouldn’t be in the sport.

It doesn’t appear Toyota gives a damn about LMC. It doesn’t appear JGR is trying to help, except for the alleged rouge engineer selling setup info.

gbvette62

I agree, Legacy was the first team that came to mind when I read about the alleged technology sale. It makes sense, neither Legacy car made the playoffs and being a Toyota team Legacy can likely learn more from JGR, than a Ford or Chevy team can.

You’re wrong about Legacy’s position with Toyota and JGR though. Jones and Nemechek are both highly regarded by Toyota and I’m sure they’d like them to succeed. And it was Johnson who decided to go it alone, without a JGR alliance. Johnson apparently thought he was smarter, could run a team and build cars better than Gibbs and/or Toyota. But so far all he’s proven is that he’s as bad a car owner, as he was an IndyCar driver. It’s a shame to see what he’s done to Petty Racing, a team that seemed to be heading upward just two short years ago.

Echo

I’d bet both of the comments are wrong about it being Jimmie. One talks about Jimmie not being smart enough lmao