All the chatter rolling into New Hampshire was about the swagger Joe Gibbs Racing carried out of the opening Playoff round. Three races, three JGR wins—they looked unstoppable.
Then Loudon happened, and JGR all but vanished.
The headline moment—or lowlight, depending on which Toyota garage stall you favor—came in Stage 2, when Denny Hamlin and Ty Gibbs decided to settle family business the old-fashioned way: by wrecking each other.
For 40 laps they pounded doors like they were fighting over the last slice of pizza, before finally boiling over on lap 110. Exiting Turn 4, Hamlin, a four-time winner this season and supposed title threat, flat-out punted Gibbs into the Turn 1 wall.
“Does Ty know we’re going for a championship? What the fu*k,” Hamlin barked on the radio. “Are they afraid to talk to him? That’s what I feel like—they’re scared of him.”
Gibbs wasn’t scared. His response on the radio was two words, dripping with menace: “Game on.”
His No. 54 Camry, however, didn’t share that confidence. It came to rest against the inside wall, waited for a tow, and eventually limped back to the garage. The crew poked and prodded, but the damage was terminal. Gibbs’ day was over.
After a trip to the infield care center, Gibbs offered the kind of boilerplate line that could’ve been written by a PR intern: “It’s unfortunate, but I’m excited to go race next week. I’m looking forward to it. We’ll have a good race next week.”
For his part, Hamlin was also diplomatic, for the most part.
“It’s super unfortunate he got spun there and obviously the contact came from us,” Hamlin said. “Yeah, I don’t have any other comment other than that. Just had some contact into (turn) one. It was obviously a really rough race before that.”
And did he still feel someone needed to have a talk with young Gibbs?
“Well, I mean, we’ll work through it and all but just — we’ll see how it goes. But honestly, it’s unfortunate the contact happened.”
This is where we’d usually remind you Gibbs missed the Playoffs this year—after making his first Cup postseason in 2024—and is currently 19th in points. But on Sunday, stats didn’t matter. The story was how JGR’s supposed juggernaut stumbled at the Magic Mile.
Yes, there were a few bright spots: Chase Briscoe muscled his way from 27th to a top 10, Christopher Bell quietly came home sixth, and Hamlin—after all that—salvaged 12th.
But when the JGR brass gather for their team meeting this week, the topic won’t be momentum. It’ll be how one Playoff contender and one frustrated sophomore managed to turn New Hampshire into a family squabble in front of the entire garage.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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