By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service
NEWTON, Iowa — There are two things Ty Gibbs possesses in abundance—confidence and talent.
Both his victories this season have come at the expense of elite veteran drivers. In picking up his first career win at Bristol Motor Speedway in April, Gibbs outran NASCAR Cup Series champions Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson in overtime.
On Sunday at Iowa Speedway, the driver of the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota did a masterful job of keeping teammate Christopher Bell behind him after vaulting past Bell on pit road with 60 laps left in the Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol.
The outcome hinged on a two-tire call by crew chief Tyler Allen. On Lap 290 Gibbs entered pit road behind Bell and exited ahead of his teammate, after Bell stopped for four tires.
“We knew after practice the left sides weren’t wearing much, and they tended to re-fire okay,” Allen said of the decision to take right sides only. “In terms of coming into the race, it was definitely a viable option.
“Really, at that point I thought it was the only thing that was going to get us around the 20 (Bell), and then hopefully we could get enough laps where the tires equalized, and they couldn’t get by us.”
From that point on, it was up to Gibbs to maintain his advantage. For 30 laps, Bell chased him in traffic during a long green-flag cycle of pit stops. When Ross Chastain finally steered his Chevrolet to pit road and surrendered the top spot in the running order, Gibbs had the lead on Lap 331.
For the final 20 laps, Gibbs frustrated his teammate, who now has finished second seven times without a win this season—three times a runner-up to a JGR teammate.
“He just didn’t make a mistake,” Bell said after the race.
Gibbs has established a pattern in his victories. In Sunday’s race, he led only the last 20 laps. In his win at Bristol, he led only the last 25 laps, including five in overtime.
With the win at Iowa, Gibbs moved into second place in the Cup Series standings, 103 points behind another teammate, Denny Hamlin. With three races left in the regular season, top seeding in the Chase may be out of reach for Gibbs, but the 23-year-old has his eyes on a bigger prize.
“Week to week for me, but obviously want to win the title,” Gibbs replied when asked about his approach to the upcoming races and the Chase.
Gibbs has been fast ever since he broke into stock car racing. It has simply been a matter of harnessing his speed. At this point, there’s no doubt Gibbs thinks he can win a championship.
“My teammates have been a big help to me in my career and obviously me to them,” Gibbs said. “We all work hard to get our organization better and our program better, but my confidence doesn’t waver. I’m not like a head case, worrying about confidence and feeling good to go race every weekend.
“Every single weekend is different, and there’s always different things going on. If you’re searching for confidence, you need to go do a therapy session or do something else.”
Doing something else wouldn’t occur to Gibbs, whose hobby is racing sprint cars and midget race cars on dirt.
“I just really like race cars,” said Gibbs, a former NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion now in his fourth full season of Cup racing. “Obviously, the first couple years were up and down and everything.
“But I feel like if we had the same team now roll off for the first year, it would be the same results. Just took us a little bit to figure out what I needed and what I needed in the team, and now we’ve got it.”
Based on his performance on Sunday, it would be hard to argue that point.
