RICHMOND, Va. – The official announcement came this past week, but that doesn’t mean Chris Gayle hasn’t been working behind the scenes in the Toyota camp.
Gayle, who called the action from the pit box in Kyle Busch’s NASCAR XFINITY Series victory on Friday night at Richmond International Raceway, will move to Furniture Row Racing next season to guide the efforts of Sprint Cup rookie Erik Jones.
Though Jones won’t get a head start on his transition from XFINITY to Sprint Cup by running races at NASCAR’s highest level this year, Gayle already has been spending Sunday afternoons at the track, observing and learning.
And though Gayle has won eight XFINITY events with Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing this season, his is not exactly a household name. In fact, the only “Chris Gayle” with a current Wikipedia entry is a Jamaican cricketer.
But Furniture Row, which enjoys factory support from Toyota Racing Development and a technical partnership with JGR, expects Gayle to make a name for himself in short order as the crew chief for one of the sport’s rising stars.
And Gayle, 40, is using the rest of the season to get ready for the step up to Sprint Cup.
“On staying on Sundays and working, that’s kind of already started to happen,” Gayle said Friday night after the win at Richmond, site of Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 (7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN). “You guys probably didn’t know, but I’ve been around for the last couple weeks if you’ve been watching a little bit, so I’ve kind of been doing that for a little bit and we’ll continue to do that for the rest of the year.
“Maybe not Furniture Row per se, but it gives me kind of a unique perspective for all the Toyota teams to kind of see how everybody’s doing things different and kind of mold my team how I want to, based on the goods and the bads of what I learn over the next 10, 11 races.”
Source: Reid Spencer / NASCAR Wire Service
