KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Heading into the race weekend at Kansas Speedway, perhaps the most burning question in the NASCAR diaspora was what would happen next between Ty Gibbs and Denny Hamlin following their run-in last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Would Ty be looking to exact revenge? Judging by his non-answer answers in the post-incident NBC interview and his reaction to Kevin Harvick’s mid-week comments, it was clear that hard feelings still lingered.
Team owner Joe Gibbs initially suggested post-race at New Hampshire that the drivers essentially figure it out themselves, but team management ultimately stepped in for Monday’s (Sept. 22) team meeting.
We didn’t hear from Gibbs himself on Saturday (Sept. 27) at Kansas Speedway, as he instead appeared to go out of his way to avoid speaking to the media. But even without hearing directly from Ty, the message from Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe seemed to be clear: Cooler heads have prevailed.
Coach Gibbs has smoothed the troubled matters, the matter is closed and it’s time for all parties to move on for the betterment of the team and focus on winning the championship.
“Yeah, all the drivers had an opportunity to speak and to try and come up with a plan, and I think we did our best to to come up with one,” Hamlin said of the meeting.
“… I definitely got hot under the collar (on track). It went too far on my end, and certainly there’s things that I wish I could have done a little differently.”
Now, it is worth noting that this was all Hamlin said on the incident, and the two other JGR drivers who made comments were also reluctant to go into the specifics.
“Yeah, I mean, I thought that (meeting) was productive, and hopefully we do better moving forward,” Bell said.
Bell concurred that everybody felt that way, but he initially declined to give further insight into how they will all race each other from now on. When pushed, he did go a little further.
“I think it’s definitely fair to say that a line was crossed (in New Hampshire), and that was bad,” Bell remarked. “We don’t need to get any teammates wrecked. Hopefully we do better moving forward. And yeah, I think that that’s the goal: for us to race each other better moving forward.”
Bell summed up his comments with the following statement: “We had a productive meeting, and I feel optimistic about changes moving forward.”
Briscoe, as laid back as ever, joked, “There was a meeting?” when asked, but then went on to confirm what we had heard from Bell and Hamlin.
“I certainly think that things will be different going forward for us, just the teammate side of things, just trying to make it easier for all of us, right?” Briscoe said. “So I definitely think that. It’s unfortunate that stuff has to happen, but typically when you have to have tough conversations, things are normally for the better going forward.”
Briscoe was certainly the most expansive of the three who spoke on the incident.
“I think just us being smarter; you look at Penske, right?” Briscoe added. “They’re probably the best example of just how to help each other out, and they know that the more they can help each other, the better it’s going to be for all of them.
It’s something that, truthfully, we probably haven’t done the greatest job at. And that was the conversation essentially, is just we can make it way easier on ourselves. It’s already hard to win a championship as it is. I think Coach (Gibbs) has been in the sport for 32 years and he’s only won five (titles), and you know we’re not doing ourselves any favors, making it as hard as it is just on each other. So yeah, I definitely think that’s better because of it.”
Another interesting aspect to what Briscoe said centered around Joe Gibbs and the obvious wisdom and leadership the Coach had brought to the meeting.
“It was certainly my first time where I’ve really ever been in that situation where it’s not a debrief meeting or something with Coach, and I was just mind blown (at) how good he is at just being a coach and just a leader,” Briscoe recalled. “It makes sense why he’s been successful on the race side of things, but even the coaching side, he’s just so good at it.”
It appears that the case between Hamlin and Ty Gibbs is closed, albeit without hearing those words (or words to that effect) from Ty Gibbs directly. Of course, the real proof will likely come tomorrow if Denny and Ty are racing close to each other. Either way, the message from Coach Gibbs appears to be crystal clear: Teammates need to help teammates, especially when titles are on the line.
Danny Peters has written for Frontstretch since 2006. An English transplant living in San Francisco, by way of New York City, he’s had an award-winning marketing career with some of the biggest companies sponsoring sports. Working with racers all over the country, his freelance writing has even reached outside the world of racing to include movie screenplays.