LDN - Sports

Joe Gibbs Racing struggles to regain winning form

[March 31, 2017] By Jonathan Ingram, The Sports Xchange

So how bad has the 2017 season been for Joe Gibbs Racing compared to its dominance last year?

There have been five races -- seven including the Twin qualifying races at Daytona -- and not once has a JGR driver been invited to the post-race media sessions. This from a four-car team that won 12 Cup races last year, 10 poles and came within one disastrous re-start by Carl Edwards from winning the driver's championship.

As it was, Gibbs and the aligned team of Furniture Row Racing helped Toyota win 16 races last year and the manufacturer's championship. This year there's been zero victories and poles by JGR.

Edwards' unexpected decision to step down during the offseason continues to cast a shadow. The biggest hurdle for JGR, however, appears to be the 2018 Toyota Camry design introduced this year with its new look and aerodynamics.

Heading to the short track of Martinsville, Va., on Sunday may be the tonic that JGR needs. Bodywork on the half-mile bullring is needed only for trading paint and carrying sponsor decals, not for aerodynamics. Brakes, chassis and engines are the decisive factors at Martinsville as well as drivers.

As long as JGR has Denny Hamlin, it will have the insight needed on how to set up a chassis and drive through the corners of the track that was once comprised of dirt and hosted a race in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949.

But as seems to have been the case since Edwards chose the wrong time to block Joey Logano in last year's season finale, the breaks have not been going the way of JGR.

Headed into Martinsville, the team announced without any detail that Dave Rogers, a longtime crew chief with 18 career Cup victories, was taking an indefinite leave from the sport. This comes on the heels of consecutive seventh-place finishes by his driver -- Mexican rookie Daniel Suarez, who replaced Edwards.

It's just yet another distraction that includes Kyle Busch's post-race fight in Las Vegas with Logano and a heavy crash by veteran Matt Kenseth last weekend at the Auto Club Speedway. Then there was the rather disastrous choice of pit strategies at Daytona in the season's first stage race.

Perhaps the biggest distraction for the Gibbs team is the fact that Furniture Row has run so well with its new Toyotas. Driver Martin Truex, Jr. became the first to sweep all three stages in Las Vegas en route to victory and was a contender at the Auto Club Speedway before losing a late duel with Kyle Larson.

By comparison, Furniture Row also added a rookie this year, Erik Jones, and began entering a second car for the first time.

After an initial hiccup at Daytona that was traced to drawing up an incorrect template for the new Camry at its shops, Truex, Jr. has two Top 5 finishes, eight playoff bonus points and is third in the point standings.

For his part, rookie Jones was on track for a second consecutive Top 10 finish at the Auto club before getting an uncontrolled tire penalty.

[to top of second column]

In a season where point standings matter when it comes to the playoffs, Busch is the only JGR driver in the top 10 -- and he's 10th.

The good news headed into Martinsville: Busch won last year's spring Cup event the day after a Camping World Truck Series victory and Hamlin has five career victories at the track.

Hamlin, from Chesterfield, Va., trails Jimmie Johnson, who has nine victories, in the career win category, but expressed optimism during a promotional visit earlier this month.

"This is a very confident race track for me," Hamlin said. "With that confidence comes a lot of anxiety though, because I expect to win. If I don't win, that's not a successful weekend. That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself, especially with today's competition."

Hamlin says he doesn't worry about lap times, rather focuses on how he wants his car to feel on the track, whose tight confines are often compared to a paper clip.

"It's been around for 70 years," he said. "That's something not many race tracks can say. All of the history here -- you look around at the old photos and even though a lot has changed around the race track, the race track itself has not changed. The configuration hasn't changed. It's still very similar to how it used to be many, many years ago.

"I take a lot of pride in coming to Martinsville and running well. A win is the only thing acceptable when I come to this race track. It's circled on our calendar every off season."

But Hamlin, whose last victory at Martinsville came in the spring race two years ago, says it gets tougher each year due to shared information and computer data. That now extends beyond his immediate circle of teammates such as Busch to the fellow Toyota drivers at Furniture Row.

"The few drivers that have perfected this place don't have as big of an advantage that I feel like that we used to have many years ago with all the data sharing and all that goes on," he said. "The advantages that you had have been whittled down. So, to continue to put the expectations of coming here and winning no matter what is probably a little unrealistic. But it's a goal we always set."

At least the data sharing is a two-way street. Whatever the Furniture Row team may have found with its aerodynamics for this year's new low downforce rules is available to JGR -- in terms of overall figures, if not specifics. It's a matter of time before JGR is back in the hunt at the front on the intermediate and restrictor plate tracks.

In the meantime, there's always good ol' Martinsville.

-----------------------------------------------

Back to top