Composure under pressure paid huge dividends for Ty Gibbs in the Iowa Corn 350 as the 23-year-old held off a stalking Christopher Bell to claim his second victory this season and jump to second in the driver standings.
With three races remaining in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season, Gibbs trails Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin by 103 points. Ryan Blaney remained third in the standings with his third-place finish Sunday, but Tyler Reddick dropped to fourth. Reddick, who could do no wrong through the season’s first 14 races, completed only three laps in Iowa before crashing in turn two and taking Erik Jones with him.
“Just got out of shape in an area—corner entry—where I thought we were pretty secure all weekend,” Reddick said. “I feel awful for our…team. For us to take ourselves out is one thing, but to take out a fellow Toyota teammate when they are racing for the Chase—pretty much ended their day as well. It is the type of stuff you don’t do to yourself, and you don’t do to a (Toyota) teammate.”
Even though Blaney was the race’s top lap leader, setting the pace on three occasions for 129 of the 350 laps, it was Gibbs’ maturity that allowed him to collect his second career victory.
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During Gibbs’ first pit stop with 75 laps completed, his crew dropped the jack before his Toyota’s right-rear wheel was tight. That forced his crew to jack up the car again so the wheel could be tightened before he returned to the seven-eighths-mile track. That left Gibbs 28th at the beginning of Stage 2. That’s when he told himself, “Let’s lock in, hammer down.”
Gibbs needed 80 laps to maneuver his way back into the top 10 and when Stage 2 ended on lap 211, he was fourth. He restarted the final Stage in sixth, but it was his final green-flag stop that positioned him to claim Toyota’s first Cup victory at Iowa Speedway.
With 60 laps remaining, Bell possessed a 2.604-second advantage over Gibbs; however, both drivers pitted the following lap. Bell received four fresh tires, while Gibbs’ crew chief Tyler Allen gave his young driver two right-side tires.
“There were a couple of datapoints throughout the race where we had actually taken rights and put a lot of laps on left-side tires,” Allen said. “We knew after practice the left sides weren’t wearing much, and they tended to re-fire OK. In terms of coming into the race, it was definitely a viable option. Really, at that point, I thought it was the only thing that was going to get us around the 20 (Bell), and then, hopefully, we could get enough laps where the tires equalized and they couldn’t get by us.”
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Allen’s strategy paid off. Gibbs left pit road ahead of Bell. When the green-flag pit stop cycle was completed, Gibbs held less than a second lead over Bell. Throughout those closing laps, Bell made several attempts to pass his young teammate but could never complete the maneuver.
“This is what you call a bad second-place finish for sure,” Bell said after his seventh runner-up finish this year. “I don’t know what else to say. Ty did a really good job. He did a great job managing the race. I could tell that he was slipping and sliding around… he just didn’t make a mistake.”
A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association’s sports feature category. During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication’s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.