It’s no secret that 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion Ty Gibbs hasn’t lived up to the hype throughout the first three years of his Cup Series career.<\/p>\n
His “highlight” remains beating Ty Dillon with a 21st place finish<\/a> in NASCAR’s inaugural In-Season Challenge gimmick tournament this past summer, and in addition to being the only Joe Gibbs Racing driver without a win since September, he is also the only one not in this year’s playoffs \u2013 and he remains in search of his first career victory after well over 100 starts.<\/p>\n Many have pinned Gibbs’ role as the driver of the No. 54 Toyota on nepotism, and given just how far off he has been from teammates Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, and Christopher Bell, it’s probably not an unfair assessment, especially when you consider Briscoe’s success has come in only his first year with the team.<\/p>\n This is a driver who replaced future Hall of Famer Kyle Busch and has put up numbers not nearly as good as several others in lesser equipment.<\/p>\n Gibbs drew further criticism at New Hampshire Motor Speedway<\/a> back in September, when he raced Hamlin and Bell, both of whom aiming to advance to the round of 8, unnecessarily hard for position in the mid-teens. Radio communication from Gibbs illustrated a complete lack of regard for both his teammates and the situation they were in, and Hamlin eventually got fed up and spun Gibbs out.<\/p>\n Of course, Hamlin being Hamlin, the media (and fans) did the usual and made him out to be the villain, even though everyone knew deep down it was justified and would have praised literally any other driver for doing the exact same thing.<\/p>\n Some even went as far as saying that this sort of incident would prove to be a distraction<\/a> for the driver of the No. 11 Toyota and lead to an early playoff elimination as he continues to pursue his first career championship.<\/p>\n Not so fast.<\/p>\n Hamlin still qualified for the round of 8 relatively comfortably on points, and he became the first driver to lock himself into the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway with a win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two Sundays ago, following a late (clean) pass on Briscoe for the lead.<\/p>\n Skip ahead to this past Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway, and now Briscoe is set to join Hamlin in the Championship 4<\/a>. And it ironically wouldn’t have been possible without Gibbs.<\/p>\n Ty Gibbs gets much needed redemption with timely assist<\/p>\n In the two-lap overtime shootout of the YellaWood 500 at the four-turn, 2.66-mile (4.281-kilometer) high-banked Lincoln, Alabama oval, Gibbs fully committed to playing the team game.<\/p>\n Yes, his third place finish was his best since his runner-up in Chicago back in early July, but without him, Briscoe never would have managed to seal the victory ahead of Front Row Motorsports’ Todd Gilliland. He could have been selfish, gone for the win, and messed up his teammate’s charge in the process.<\/p>\n He didn’t.<\/p>\n “Ty was the whole reason I won the race,” Briscoe said<\/a> after securing his third win of 2025. “He was extremely committed to me from the get-go.”<\/p>\n Sure, Gibbs is still seeking his own breakthrough performance, and there’s little doubt that improvement will be expected moving forward.<\/p>\n