Coy Gibbs, father of Ty Gibbs, called the end of Saturday’s Xfinity race, which saw Ty Gibbs wreck teammate Brandon Jones for the win, “disappointing” and said his son needs to understand the ramifications of his actions.
“That’s not what we wanted for our race team,” Coy Gibbs said after Sunday’s Cup race won by Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell. “We’re going to meet and deal with that internally and handle that.”
Ty Gibbs and Jones dueled for the win Saturday. Even if he finished second, Ty Gibbs was in position to secure a spot in this week’s championship race at Phoenix Raceway. Jones had to win to make it.
Jones led Ty Gibbs when the white flag waved to begin the final lap. Gibbs ran into the back of Jones entering Turn 1. The contact sent Jones into the wall, ending his chance of winning and make the title race.
“I get you want to win the race and go for it,” Jones said afterward. “I want to race against the best. I want to try to beat the best out here, but, man, you’ve got to give me an opportunity and a chance. That’s not really even having a chance to go race for a win. At least we could have been side-by-side.
“Second place, last place, it didn’t matter for us today. We had to win the race. … I would have liked to have had a chance to race against him and try to hold him off. To me, that’s what is fun, door to-door racing and doing that, not just wrecking somebody.”
Coy Gibbs, vice chairman of Joe Gibbs Racing, said of his son: “I appreciate his aggression, but sometimes you got to pull back a little bit. This is a place where we need to pull back some.
“Just talk to him and explain to him that doing that affects not just him, it affects our whole company, all our sponsors, all the people we deal with, Toyota, obviously affected Brandon. Those are things maybe you’re not thinking of in that split second, but hopefully we can get with him and educate him on those things.”
Had Jones won, it would have given Joe Gibbs Racing two cars in the Xfinity title race. Instead, the team has only Ty Gibbs. He’ll go against JR Motorsports drivers Noah Gragson, Josh Berry and Justin Allgaier for the crown.
#NASCAR … I asked Coy Gibbs, vice chairman of Joe Gibbs Racing and Ty Gibbs’ dad about Ty wrecking a teammate to win Saturday’s Xfinity race. Here is what Coy said … pic.twitter.com/KdBPQp4ids
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) October 30, 2022