In his 131st NASCAR Cup Series start, Ty Gibbs is FINALLY a winner.
The 23-year-old grandson of Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl-winning head coach and the patriarch of the Joe Gibbs Racing organization, pulled his No. 54 Monster Energy Toyota Camry XSE into Victory Lane in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol, fending off NASCAR Cup Series champions Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson.
Gibbs was thoroughly tested en route to his first victory, too. The Charlotte, North Carolina-native faced NASCAR Overtime, in which the two strongest cars, Blaney and Larson, had tires that were 95 laps fresher.
The victory itself was a long time coming for Gibbs, currently in his fourth season competing full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series. After an extremely difficult year in 2025, there were times that many wondered whether the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series champion would ever win at NASCAR’s top-level.
But, as long as the journey was for Gibbs, it’s been longer for the Gibbs family.
The Gibbs name is one of the most successful in NASCAR history, rivaling that of Petty, Allison, and Earnhardt, but, until Gibbs reached the NASCAR Cup Series in 2022, all of that legacy came from a race shop, not from behind the wheel of a racecar.
Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) itself has been a staple in NASCAR for 35 years, and from the day that Dale Jarrett pulled the iconic Interstate Batteries No. 18 into Victory Lane in the 1993 DAYTONA 500, the team has been a force to be reckoned with.
While the term juggernaut is 100% accurate and absolutely fits the profile for JGR, with the team amassing more than 225 wins in the NASCAR Cup Series over the years, that word sounds too robotic for something that has always been personal for the Gibbs family.
Joe Gibbs has spent more than three decades at the helm of Joe Gibbs Racing, but for most of the team’s time in NASCAR, his sons, J.D. and Coy Gibbs, were involved in building this dynasty, too.
J.D. Gibbs was with Joe Gibbs Racing from the very beginning, first as a tire changer, and later as Team President, a role he held for nearly two decades before stepping down to fight a degenerative brain disease, which would take his life in 2019.
The eldest of the Gibbs children had a head for business and was often involved in the day-to-day operations of Joe Gibbs Racing at the height of the team’s success. J.D. gets credit for discovering Denny Hamlin, the team’s most successful driver to date, and developing a special bond that carried the pair for more than a decade.
Coy Gibbs, the father of Sunday’s race-winner, was involved in the competition side of Joe Gibbs Racing starting in the mid 2000s, while also helping to expand the team’s footprint beyond just NASCAR, heading up the JGR Motocross Team from 2008 to 2020.
After the passing of his brother, Coy took on a much larger role in the business operations of Joe Gibbs Racing. But unfortunately, Coy passed away in his sleep in November 2022, the night before the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix, and the night after Ty Gibbs captured the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship.
While Coy got the chance to see Ty compete at NASCAR’s highest level, a division that at one point in the early 2000s Coy had hoped to one day compete in, he didn’t get the opportunity to see his son celebrate his first NASCAR Cup Series win.
In Sunday’s post-race press conference, Joe Gibbs made a point to acknowledge both of his late sons and their contributions to where Joe Gibbs Racing as an organization, and Ty Gibbs as a race car driver, are today.
“I want to also just say that Coy [Gibbs], he guided Ty all the way from go-karts to Cup. Coy, I know he’s got a great view of what just happened. Then his uncle is there, too, J.D,” Gibbs said. “I think about those two guys, everything they did for the race team, for us as a family.”
They say that no parent should ever have to bury their own children, but Joe and Pat Gibbs suffered that unimaginable loss not just once, but twice. Even years after both J.D. and Coy have passed on, the organization continues to honor their memories and run the business the same as it always has been: in the family.
Heather Gibbs, Coy’s wife and Ty’s mother, decided after her husband’s passing to drop everything and become part of the Joe Gibbs Racing succession plan, and in recent years, has been a major part of the organization’s success.
Even to this day, a passion project that started with Joe and his son, J.D. Gibbs, 35 years ago, has continued to stay in the family and flourished into a multi-generational dynasty — as four of Joe Gibbs’ grandchildren (Ty, Jackson, Miller, and Jason) are working with the organization, right now.
Ty, of course, is a driver (and now, a NASCAR Cup Series race-winner), but Jackson is also an integral part of the program, serving as the Front Tire Changer for the No. 54 Toyota Camry XSE, meaning two of his grandchildren got to celebrate a victory on Sunday at Bristol.
That isn’t something “Coach” takes for granted either…
“This is our future. This is what we want to do as a family. We love it,” Gibbs added. “I guess what I’m saying, for all your grandkids and kids, everybody in here knows the feeling. It’s just different. It just means so much.”
As much as Gibbs admires his grandchildren for being involved in the continued success of a “family business” that he’s assembled from the ground up throughout the last 30 years, that admiration is also reciprocated back towards the NASCAR Hall of Famer, for building something so special, that allows the family to find success in all different aspects of life — whether that’s driving a race car, serving on a pit crew, or working in business.
It still takes a lot of hard work, though, and that hard work is what has gotten 23-year-old Ty Gibbs to the highest of highs in the pinnacle of American stock car racing.
“This is the man, right here. I’ve never seen somebody work so hard in my life,” Ty Gibbs said post-race. “He and my mom, I come to the shop at 6:00 AM or 7:00 PM, there’s nobody there, but they are always there. They work their asses off. He’s a great role model. I wouldn’t be here unless it was for him.”
Sure, there’s been some bumps along the way, and as of late, some controversy, too, but that’s what makes these moments even more special — not just for the family that has experienced the trials and tribulations, but those who have watched them overcome those challenges.
