It is hard to believe that Joe Gibbs Racing’s only NASCAR Cup Series championships in the last 10 years are Kyle Busch’s two titles. Nobody on the team’s current roster has ever taken home the big trophy, even though JGR always seems to have a driver or two in championship contention. Last year was a notable exception as the first season when no Gibbs drivers reached the championship round of the postseason. It is unlikely that that will happen again.
Even so, JGR has not shown as much propensity as its closest competitors to step up its game in the postseason. Hendrick Motorsports made playoff excellence an art form during Jimmie Johnson’s career. Team Penske has been the most recent organization to crack the postseason code, winning the championship for the past three years.
Gibbs cars can match Hendrick and Penske on a week-by-week basis, but there has never been an instance under the current format where a Gibbs driver dominated the postseason and ultimately won the championship. JGR’s technical support played a pivotal role in Martin Truex Jr.’s 2017 title, but Joe Gibbs himself would be the first to tell you that a championship by Furniture Row Racing does not count for his own team. Even in Busch’s case, the only playoff race he won in both of his championship seasons was the last one. In those instances, Busch and his team were great when it mattered most. Yet Busch never looked like the clear driver to beat in 2015 or 2019.
When Busch left the team after 2022, it was expected that Denny Hamlin would become JGR’s biggest championship threat. Hamlin was the winningest driver on the team, and although he had never won a title, it was easy to make the argument that he was the organization’s most complete driver.
But during the 2022 playoffs, Christopher Bell had a breakout. In his second year driving the No. 20 car, Bell won two postseason events and advanced to the championship race. Hamlin had a strong run through the playoffs himself, never finishing worse than 13th. However, the No. 11 team did not win any of those races, and Hamlin was eliminated in the Round of 8 by Ross Chastain’s “Hail Melon” at Martinsville Speedway. Bell did not win the championship, but it was clear that Gibbs found another driver with the ability to contend for titles.
In 2023, Bell won two races for JGR while Hamlin and Truex won three races each. Truex earned the regular season championship by 47 points over Hamlin, and it was Truex who looked like he would be JGR’s biggest title threat. But the No. 19 team stumbled its way through the playoffs, only getting to the Round of 8 thanks to Truex’s playoff points. Hamlin was good in the postseason again, winning early at Bristol Motor Speedway. Yet the Round of 8 was once again Hamlin’s kryptonite, and the No. 11 team missed out on advancing to the championship race again.
Bell and the No. 20 team did not. Although he was behind his teammates during the regular season, Bell brought a lot of speed to the playoffs and secured a crucial win at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the same race where Truex and Hamlin ran well but finished 29th and 30th. The championship race ended with Bell crashing out early, but it still felt like the torch at JGR was being passed from the veterans to the young gun.
So, what went wrong in 2024? Every JGR driver reached the postseason last year, with Ty Gibbs joining Hamlin, Bell and Truex. Yet all four drivers’ results were quite lopsided, and all their wins came during the first half of the season. Truex and Gibbs did not win at all. Both drivers wound up backing their way into the postseason after a summer slump, and they were both eliminated in the first round. Hamlin was his usual consistent self after some early struggles, but for the third year in a row, a lack of wins knocked him out of title contention in the Round of 8.
Bell came agonizingly close to the championship race, but this time there was no magical Round of 8 win. He lost to Joey Logano at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on a fuel mileage gamble. Bell then finished a solid fourth at Homestead and appeared to be in good shape going forward. Yet on the last lap of the Martinsville race, NASCAR determined that Bell made a move too similar to the now-banned “Hail Melon” and penalized him one lap. The difference in finishing positions eliminated Bell from the playoffs, and no JGR driver fought for the title in the championship race.
JGR is going to be well represented in the 2025 postseason. Hamlin, Bell and newcomer Chase Briscoe will be part of the playoff field. Ty Gibbs has made a respectable turnaround from where he started the season, but with five races left, he is still 52 points below the cut line with a lot of ground to make up. Hamlin added to his playoff point total with a win at Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday, July 20, which also made him the winningest driver in the Cup Series this year. Bell has three wins and Briscoe has one. Although Briscoe and the No. 19 team have made steady improvements in the last couple of months, Hamlin and Bell figure to be the organization’s biggest title threats once again.
However, for a JGR driver to win the Cup Series championship, the organization will have to show something that it has not reliably shown in years. One of its drivers will have to deliver a victory in a situation where a win is the only thing that matters. Can Bell finally win the big prize if he reaches the championship round? Can Briscoe grind his way through the playoffs like he did in 2022 and 2024 with Stewart-Haas Racing? Or could Hamlin, surrounded by a team where youth is steadily taking over, break through for a clutch performance like he had at Dover and win the title that has eluded him for 20 years?
It would be only with those types of performances that JGR could prove that it has finally mastered the playoffs.
Bryan began writing for Frontstretch in 2016. He has penned Up to Speed for the past eight years. A lifelong student of auto racing, Bryan is a published author and automotive historian. He is a native of Columbus, Ohio and currently resides in Southern Kentucky.