Ty Gibbs got the trophy, Christopher Bell got second, and Joe Gibbs Racing got something almost as valuable: proof that all four of its cars can survive a weekend that began with two of them apparently trying to murder their drivers.
Lost amid Gibbs’ breakthrough victory at Iowa Speedway was the rather impressive performance of the other three JGR Toyotas.
Bell finished second, while Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe came home fifth and sixth, respectively. And considering how Saturday went for Hamlin and Briscoe, those finishes were less “solid day at the office” and more “how on Earth did you two pull that off?”
Both drivers had their practice sessions shortened Saturday when brake problems surfaced on their Toyotas. The cars went to the garage, where crew members attacked the problem with the sort of urgency normally reserved for defusing bombs.
Qualifying offered little reassurance.
Briscoe managed 20th. Hamlin was 29th. Then things got even more entertaining for the No. 11 team when overnight adjustments meant Hamlin had to start from the rear.
And then they went racing.
Somehow, Hamlin drove all the way to fifth.
“I just had to white-knuckle every lap,” Hamlin said afterward. “Obviously not knowing where my car was going to land when I got into the corner, obviously you want to have brakes, and that was a crazy race to have to do it the whole time without it.”
That sounds like an unnecessarily exciting way to spend 350 miles.
It also explains the look on Hamlin’s face after climbing from the car. He appeared less like a professional race car driver who had just finished fifth and more like a man who had spent three hours wrestling an angry bear.
Hamlin admitted the experience was not something he would like to make a weekly tradition.
“Yeah, I’d retire at the end of the year if I had to do that every week, that’s for sure,” he said. “Lesson learned from our part, that obviously we got in a box that we weren’t allowed to get out of and we just had to grind away the best we could.”
Briscoe had his own brake drama, although his situation improved enough that he could at least spend portions of the race thinking about something other than whether the pedal beneath his right foot intended to cooperate.
“The brakes were still a little odd,” Briscoe said. “That whole first stage I had no issues and I thought we were going to be really good, and then the second stage started rising.”
Despite that, Briscoe said his Toyota had plenty of speed, particularly on the long runs.
That matters for a driver who has spent much of the season trying to claw his way back into playoff contention. Briscoe arrived at Iowa 37th in points and left fifth, putting another sizable chunk of momentum in his pocket with the regular season winding down.
“Overall great day obviously for JGR, great points day for us,” Briscoe said. “Got to just try to keep it going.”
That, in a nutshell, is what made Iowa such a good day for Gibbs and the entire JGR operation.
Four cars finished inside the top six. One won. One finished second. Two others overcame mechanical headaches, poor qualifying efforts and, in Hamlin’s case, a trip to the back of the field to finish fifth and sixth.
Even Joe Gibbs seemed a little stunned by what his four drivers had accomplished.
“I want to say this: I’ve never seen Denny that exhausted,” Gibbs said. “He got out of that car, and he was sitting there on the pit wall, I think he was so nervous — we all were — about the brakes, and it just put a lot of extra pressure on him. I think he drove his heart out.”
That might be the understatement of the weekend.
For JGR, Iowa was supposed to be about Ty Gibbs finally putting another win on his résumé. Instead, it turned into a showcase of the organization’s depth.
The brakes may have been questionable.
The results certainly weren’t.
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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