Could team owner Joe Gibbs’ fondest dream become Joe Gibbs Racing’s worst nightmare?
Would it really benefit the organization if all four JGR drivers — Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards — happened to qualify for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway?
Is there any way it could actually happen?
“Obviously you’d love that,” Gibbs said Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway, after Kenseth gave JGR its seventh victory in nine NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races and the organization’s 11th in the 26-race regular season. “But that’s a dream. It’s hard for a dream to come true.
“I don’t think anybody here is realistically thinking about that as a possibility. I think there’s so many good cars in there. We were just talking about the 4 car (reigning champion Kevin Harvick), the 22 (2014 finalist Joey Logano), the 2 (2012 champion Brad Keselowski). All those cars are capable of winning a championship — period.”
Busch, who qualified for the Chase despite missing the first 11 Cup races of the season because of injury, is delighted JGR is the only organization to put four cars in the Chase, but he acknowledges a four-car Gibbs finale at Homestead would complicate matters.
“I know Joe Gibbs would look at it and say that he can be considered another NASCAR champion if all four cars make it to Homestead with a chance for the championship,” Busch told the NASCAR Wire Service at Richmond. “But I’ll tell you what — all four of these teams would absolutely hate that.
“I just think it would be so awkward that we wouldn’t know how to work together. We wouldn’t know if we were supposed to work together or if we weren’t supposed to work together… But I’ll tell you what. Joe Gibbs wouldn’t care. He’d be happy as a clam.”
Busch’s return from a broken right leg and left foot suffered in the season-opening NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Daytona International Speedway helped form a critical mass that galvanized the entire team.
The driver of the No. 18 Toyota won at Sonoma in late June, starting a string of 11 races in which JGR drivers would record eight victories, a dominant run interrupted only by Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s restrictor-plate victory at Daytona and Joey Logano’s triumphs at Watkins Glen and Bristol.
“Of course, Kyle coming back from a serious injury, to be able to do what he’s done, that was a huge deal for us this year,” Gibbs said.
Coming off a lackluster 2014 season that produced but two victories, JGR shuffled its crew chief lineup, pairing Darian Grubb with newbie Edwards, moving Dave Rogers to Hamlin’s No. 11 Camry, keeping Jason Ratcliff with Kenseth and promoting XFINITY Series crew chief Adam Stevens to the leadership of Busch’s Cup crew.
