{"id":54593,"date":"2025-09-14T18:40:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T23:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=54593"},"modified":"2025-09-15T09:43:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T14:43:05","slug":"theres-no-let-up-in-the-dominance-of-joe-gibbs-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/14\/theres-no-let-up-in-the-dominance-of-joe-gibbs-racing\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no let-up in the dominance of Joe Gibbs Racing"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect the Joe Gibbs Racing juggernaut to lose steam anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Christopher Bell, driver of the #20 DEWALT Toyota, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway on September 13, 2025 in Bristol, Tennessee. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

After Christopher Bell charged to victory in Saturday\u2019s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway\u2014completing the organization\u2019s sweep of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, team owner Joe Gibbs basked in the afterglow of yet another job well done.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, just so excited about the start to the Playoffs,\u201d Gibbs said. \u201cJust appreciate everybody back at our race shop. I talk about that all the time. We’ll hang a banner on Monday, and I get a chance to thank them, but it honestly takes everybody to be able to get our cars to the race track like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve got fast cars right now. It means a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

All three of JGR\u2019s Playoff drivers had a hand in the sweep. Chase Briscoe opened the postseason with a victory in the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. Denny Hamlin followed with a win at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.<\/p>\n

Bell completed the sweep by grabbing the lead after a restart with four laps left, as unexpectedly extreme tire degradation dictated a hodgepodge of strategies that produced 38 lead changes among 14 drivers and repeatedly shuffled the running order.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have bet my house that it was going to be a normal Bristol race,\u201d said Bell\u2019s crew chief Adam Stevens, who was shocked by the fall-off of the new right-side tires Goodyear provided for the elimination race.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Stevens still has a place to live, and he and Bell will head to the Round of 12 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway with confidence born of two sources: Bell\u2019s victory at Bristol and his overwhelming success at the one-mile flat track in the Granite State.<\/p>\n

In five Cup Series starts at the Magic Mile, Bell has two victories, a runner-up finish and a pole. Last year, he used his dirt-track background and ability to find optimal racing lines to win a Loudon race that concluded on wet tires. <\/p>\n

In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Bell is undefeated in four starts at New Hampshire. He also participated in a July tire test at the track, along with fellow Playoff drivers Joey Logano and Ross Chastain.<\/p>\n

To explain JGR\u2019s blazing starts to the Playoffs, look no further than the choice of tracks this year.<\/p>\n

After hosting the regular-season cutoff race in 2024, Darlington returned to its typical spot as the Playoff opener, replacing Atlanta. Hamlin is the leading active winner at the Lady in Black with five victories, and Briscoe was the defending winner of the Southern 500, in a Stewart-Haas Racing Ford before moving to JGR in 2025.<\/p>\n

At Gateway, which supplanted the Watkins Glen road course as the site of the second Playoff race, Hamlin was a two-time runner-up before winning last Sunday, and Bell showed potential-race winning speed and swept the first two stages last year before engine issues dropped him to seventh at the finish.<\/p>\n

The change of venues in the Round of 12 certainly helped, but the speed in the Gibbs cars also is undeniable. Ty Gibbs, who missed the Playoffs, led a race-high 201 of 500 laps at Bristol before trouble accessing pit road and a collision with Austin Hill\u2019s Chevrolet sapped his winning chances.<\/p>\n

Briscoe led 127 laps and Bell 12\u2014including the one that counted.<\/p>\n

At New Hampshire, the JGR drivers will try to extend their winning streak to four. Then it\u2019s off to Kansas Speedway, where Hamlin is the leading active winner with four victories.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s convenient\u2014not to mention encouraging to other teams\u2014to recall the words of Hal Holbrook to Charlie Sheen in the movie Wall Street: \u201cYou\u2019re on a roll, kid. Enjoy it while it lasts\u2014because it never does.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current tidal wave at Joe Gibbs Racing, however, feels more enduring. The remaining tracks on the Playoff schedule set up beautifully for the organization, which seems poised to break Team Penske\u2019s three-year stranglehold on the series championship.<\/p>\n

But which Gibbs driver will do the honors? That\u2019s where the guesswork is involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Don\u2019t expect the Joe Gibbs Racing juggernaut to lose steam anytime soon. After Christopher Bell charged to victory in Saturday\u2019s Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway\u2014completing the organization\u2019s sweep of the first round of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, team owner Joe Gibbs basked in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":54578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[451,1124,16],"class_list":["post-54593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-christopher-bell","tag-joe-gibbs-racing","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2235298114-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1706","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-ecx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54595,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54593\/revisions\/54595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}