BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 Outdueling two NASCAR CupSeries champions for the first victory of his career, Ty Gibbs made an emphatic and emotional breakthrough Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n
The win came in the 131st Cup start for the grandson of NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner and former Super Bowl-winning coach Joe Gibbs.<\/p>\n
Ty Gibbs also is the son of the late Coy Gibbs, who also helped run his father\u2019s team before unexpectedly dying in his sleep on Nov. 6, 2022 \u2013 the day after his son won the championship in NASCAR\u2019s second-highest division.<\/p>\n
Ty Gibbs, 23, moved to the Cup series the next year and had multiple near-misses (runner-up finishes at Darlington in 2024 and Chicago last year) before reaching victory lane in his fourth season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of my best experiences\u201d Joe Gibbs said. \u201cWhen I think about Coy, he brought Ty up the entire time. I know he\u2019s probably watching.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ty Gibbs interrupted his grandfather\u2019s postrace interview in the pits with a hug.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the man right here,\u201d said Ty, whose mother, Heather, also is a co-owner of JGR. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen somebody work so hard in my life, him and my mom. I come to the shop at 6 a.m. or 7 p.m., and there\u2019s nobody there, but they are always there. They work their (butts) off. He\u2019s a great role model. I wouldn\u2019t be here unless it was for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibbs led the final 25 laps at Bristol, inheriting first place under caution on a strategy gamble by staying on track in his No. 54 Toyota while Ryan Blaney pitted from the lead along with Kyle Larson, who led a race-high 284 of 505 laps.<\/p>\n
Blaney and Larson both restarted outside the top five, and Gibbs was cruising toward a win before the yellow flew again on the 498th lap to set up the first overtime restart at Bristol in 11 years.<\/p>\n
Despite Blaney and Larson having tires that were nearly 100 laps fresher, Gibbs fended off the star drivers on a two-lap shootout to the checkered flag.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I didn\u2019t really know or care if I was going to win or not,\u201d Gibbs said. \u201cI thought the race was awesome. I really appreciate always racing Ryan Blaney and Kyle, too. Those guys always run me really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blaney, the 2023 Cup champion who started from the pole position, finished second after leading 190 laps in the No. 12 Ford.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, great battle for sure,\u201d he said. \u201c I fought a lot of different cars. Gave it my best shot on the last restart. Was close but just couldn\u2019t get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Larson, the defending Cup Series champion who won the first two stages, finished third and remained winless in the past 32 races with his No. 5 Chevrolet.<\/p>\n
The Toyotas of Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe rounded out the top five.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuper happy for Ty,\u201d Briscoe said of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time coming. To do it the way he did it, on old tires, to beat the two guys that dominated all day long, that was impressive. Just super happy for him and the whole family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gibbs became the sixth NASCAR driver to earn his first Cup victory at Bristol, joining Dale Earnhardt (1979), Rusty Wallace (1986), Ernie Irvan (1990), Elliott Sadler (2001) and Kurt Busch (2002).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s awesome to be with great people,\u201d the younger Gibbs said. \u201cTo be in this position is great. I\u2019d love for my father to have seen this. I know he knew it was going to happen and expected it as well. Yeah, it was a great day for us. This is our family, so it\u2019s just such a great deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hendrick woes<\/p>\n
While Larson excelled at the front, two of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates were struggling mightily.<\/p>\n
William Byron started from the rear because of unapproved adjustments to his No. 24 Chevrolet, which had steering problems in practice and qualifying Saturday. Byron, who has led at every active track but Bristol, was off the pace from the start and finished five laps down.<\/p>\n
Returning frommissing four races because of vertigo, Alex Bowman started 27th and finished last after being involved in a multicar crash started by Shane van Gisbergen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was fine, just a frustrating day,\u201d Bowman said. \u201cThought we were OK in practice and then obviously qualified bad and then just really struggled with the handling today. Bummer. Hate that we didn\u2019t get a chance to work on it and make it better and finish the race, but it\u2019s kind of outside our control. When you run that bad, stuff can happen, and it happened to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The NASCAR Cup Series will race April 19 at Kansas Speedway, the first of three consecutive tracks 1.5 miles and longer. Hendrick Motorsports has won three of the past four races at Kansas with Kyle Larsonand Chase Elliott winning last year at the oval in Kansas City, Kansas.<\/p>\n
___ <\/p>\n
AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) \u2014 Outdueling two NASCAR CupSeries champions for the first victory of his career, Ty Gibbs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-600122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}