Ty Gibbs, enigmatic lightning rod, enters new spotlight with first NASCAR Cup win

Gibbs has sparked controversy, endured tragedy, and largely kept to himself in his young NASCAR career. Sunday's breakthrough win brings it all to a bigger stage. Matt Kelley / Getty Images Share full articleBRISTOL, Tenn. — The post-race scene at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sunday had all the makings of a cinematic NASCAR moment. There was 23-year-old Ty Gibbs, the grandson of three-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Joe Gibbs, celebrating his first career Cup Series victory. He handed the checkered flag to his tearful mother, Heather, and pointed to the sky in a gesture to his late father, Coy. “I’d love for my father to have seen this,” Gibbs said. “I know he knew it was going to happen and expected it as well.” Then the young driver ran over to his beaming grandfather, who owns the powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing team, and interrupted a TV interview with a hug. The images should have been moving for any viewer, but they didn’t land for many NASCAR fans who are skeptical of Gibbs — or dislike him outright. And that’s not just a few. One thread on NASCAR’s subreddit asked where Gibbs’ victory ranked among the “most unpopular first wins” for a driver (Brian Vickers’ 2006 Talladega victory, when he accidentally wrecked Dale Earnhardt Jr. to win the race, was deemed the most unpopular). The popular NASCAR Memes account has a weekly “Ty Gibbs Hate Watch” where it openly roots against Gibbs to get a top-10 finish. Gibbs’ reputation and public persona don’t help anything, nor do his typical dealings with the media. When Gibbs shows up for NASCAR’s required interview scrums, he often finds a corner of the room and seems to hope no one spots him. When reporters inevitably do, he is polite but gives the briefest and most cliched of answers — seemingly to signal any further questions are unlikely to result in anything productive for either party. That’s his right, of course, but it’s a departure from the NASCAR norms. Most other drivers are highly incentivized to build their brands because NASCAR is a sponsorship-based sport. Drivers know if they are likable and interesting, fans are more likely to gravitate toward them — which then brings sponsors to help fund their rides. But Gibbs does not need sponsors in the same way. He is racing for his family’s team with no risk of being fired. And his No. 54 car’s sponsor, Monster Energy, doesn’t need Gibbs to do interviews about its products in order to sell its beverages. “I’m not here to be a moving billboard,” as he put it. So Gibbs simply opts to do little, if anything, outside of what NASCAR mandates. As a result, the fan perception of him is largely a projection of what they believe to be his silver-spoon image, shaped by some less-than-flattering interviews and actions when he was a teen. Does the public have an accurate view of Ty Gibbs? Or is there more than meets the eye? There are occasional glimpses of the latter here and there. Gibbs has expressed a love for a wide variety of music; he loves hip hop but also listed the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tyler Childers, Empire of the Sun and Megan Moroney as his recent searches on Spotify during a February interview. And we know he enjoys cycling as his preferred method of training. Other than that, it’s all racing. Gibbs has recently expanded into dirt-winged sprint cars, where his speed has been impressive given how little experience he has in those vehicles. If you thought the euphoria of a first career Cup win might be the moment when Gibbs chose to open up more, that wasn’t the case during Sunday’s post-race news conference. Asked about his critics, Gibbs twice said he didn’t care. Asked if Bristol was validation as a Cup driver after 130 winless starts, he said the victory didn’t change anything. Asked about why he keeps the community at arm’s length, Gibbs said he’s private, doesn’t want to show off and doesn’t care what others are doing on social media. Asked if he’s matured, Gibbs responded: “I’m 23. I was 22 last year.” Joe Gibbs said his grandson “has got a funny bone” and they laugh all the time together. But he acknowledged that side is not apparent to the public yet. “The farther we go in this sport, I know that the people in this (media) room will have a chance to talk to him,” Joe Gibbs said. “Hopefully, his personality and everything comes out, the kind of kid he is.” Recently though, the family has had to combat some negative press as well as part of a lawsuit against former competition director Chris Gabehart. Gabehart, regarded as one of the brightest minds in the NASCAR garage, was moved from his role as Denny Hamlin’s crew chief to oversee all of JGR’s teams as competition director after the 2024 season. It was a successful move for 2025, as JGR won the most races of any team last season and put two drivers into the championship race. But Gabehart felt the role was not what was advertised and felt pressured to become Gibbs’ crew chief (which he did on a temporary basis last summer). He ultimately left the team, but the departure turned messy, and Gabehart is currently being sued in federal court for allegedly taking the team’s trade secrets with him. As part of the court filings in the case, Gabehart wrote he had “serious concerns” about how Ty’s team was given preferential treatment and said it was not “managed and held accountable in the same manner as the organization’s other cars.” “Critically the No. 54 driver was not held to the same meeting attendance standards as others on the team,” Gabehart wrote in one filing. That driver, of course, is Ty. And the accusation Gibbs was skipping important competition meetings without consequence raised eyebrows around the NASCAR garage — with some feeling like it confirmed what they suspected. But after his win on Sunday, Gibbs sought to correct that perception. “Obviously, people are going to say false things about how I wasn’t present in meetings,” Gibbs said. “I’ve been the same the whole time, just to clarify that.” Meeting attendance is nothing compared to the harsh light Gibbs drew in the final year of racing in what is now called the O’Reilly Series (then Xfinity Series) before he graduated to Cup. In October 2022, Gibbs was racing teammate Brandon Jones for a victory at Martinsville Speedway and wrecked Jones’ car on the final lap to secure the win for himself. It was a selfish move because Gibbs had already clinched a spot in the championship race the following week, whereas Jones could only advance to the championship if he won the Martinsville race. So when Jones was sent crashing into the outside wall, it took an additional JGR car out of title contention. In a news conference later, Ty’s father, Coy Gibbs, a team executive, said it was “disappointing” and said he planned to educate his son on why “doing that affects not just him, it affects our whole company.” “Look, he’s my kid,” Coy said. “I appreciate his aggression. But sometimes you’ve got to pull back a little bit.” Coy had Ty walk around the JGR shop in the days following the Martinsville race and apologize to team members (he also issued a public apology). But after a stressful week, father and son were able to share a triumphant moment together: Ty won the series championship at Phoenix, and they got a cathartic moment with the entire Gibbs family in victory lane. “I’m definitely proud of him. I mean, I’ve always got his back as his father,” Coy said shortly afterward in a news conference. “To see a kid hurting — he knows he screwed up — and to go through all that, it’s tough. It’s tough as a parent, for sure. “Watching it today, just to see his determination, it definitely made me proud. My wife — we were both proud, just because he hammered down and did his job. If he wants to do this for a living, he’s going to learn how to do that.” After the victory photos and celebration ended that night, Heather and Coy returned to their Phoenix hotel. Ty was scheduled to drive in the Cup Series the next day, and JGR had one of its drivers, Christopher Bell, racing for the Cup championship. But Coy shockingly died in his sleep that night, mere hours after seeing his son’s championship victory. “I got to celebrate the most special night of our life with our family, and he did not wake up the next morning,” Heather said during testimony for the NASCAR antitrust lawsuit in December. “It was unexpected and incredibly tragic for our family. Obviously, the worst moments for me and for my children.” In the years since, Heather — a high-powered real estate agent — has taken on co-owner duties at JGR and is helping to run the company. Not only is Coy gone, but he was preceded in death by his brother, J.D. Gibbs, robbing Joe Gibbs of both sons and what was meant to be a future succession plan. Meanwhile, Ty’s Cup career has been solid but unspectacular so far. He made the playoffs once in his first three seasons and had 17 top-five finishes, but often finished behind his JGR teammates. This year, though, Ty has found another gear. He has six straight top-six finishes and has moved up to fourth in the Cup Series standings after Sunday’s win. When asked if he’s been motivated by the Gabehart comments, Ty won’t directly draw a link other than to express his gratitude for the people on his team who believe in him. It’s easy to project and believe there’s a chip on his shoulder, but that falls into the category of “Things we don’t truly know about Ty Gibbs.” Regardless, he’s young and has been through a lot. There’s certainly a man who will emerge through all of his trials, as his father knew would happen eventually. Before Coy left the dais that final night in Phoenix, he ended his news conference with one more comment about his son. “You can talk all you want, but you’d better do the right thing down the road,” Coy said. “That’s kind of what I tell him: It’s your actions. We’ll see where that goes.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, JeffGluck.com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.