Ty Gibbs 1-on-1: On what he learned as Cup rookie, his Commanders fandom
Ty Gibbs led 84 laps last Saturday at the NASCAR exhibition Clash before the final 10 laps went sour for him at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. But it was an impressive performance to open 2024 for a driver many view as a rising star.
Yes, he went winless in his rookie season in 2023, a year after winning seven races on his way to the 2022 Xfinity Series title. The 21-year-old driver is used to winning right away — he won in his seventh ARCA Series start as well as in his Xfinity Series debut.
He won 18 of his 47 ARCA races from 2019-2021 and also won four Xfinity races when running a part-time schedule in 2021. Overall, he won 30 races from 2019-2022 and then “just” one last year with an Xfinity victory on the Indianapolis road course.
Gibbs should know something about the roller coaster of pro sports. He is the grandson of team owner Joe Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls as the coach in Washington and is in both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NASCAR Hall of Fame. So, with the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday, it seemed appropriate that Gibbs would be the subject of this week’s 1-on-1.
This interview was done mid-January before the Commanders hired Dan Quinn as their new head coach.
You said in December that people gave you advice to enjoy the journey. How would you hope to kind of enjoy the journey this year?
Honestly, just the same as last year — work really hard and try to get better like we all do every week. And then besides that, the rest is kind of out of my control. And just have a good time — I, of course, love driving race cars. So this is the hard part.
Speaking to media is harder than driving race cars?
Driving race cars is the peaceful, quiet, easy part.
There’s sometimes people in your ear when racing.
Sometimes they yap a little bit. I guess you couldn’t say peaceful. But when it’s quiet, it’s nice.
What do you know now that you didn’t know a year ago?
I honestly just think experience and experience. Experience helps so much with anything you do in life and professional sports and all that. So having more experience helps me adapt to the car and the track better every single week.
What was it like to go winless in the Cup Series? Was it tough? Or once you kind of saw what the competition was maybe not as tough to handle?
It’s not ideal, of course, to go winless. But for me, I feel like we ran really fast a lot of times during the year and showed great speed. And it shows that we can be able to go win. We put ourselves in contention to go win a couple times. So I’m happy with our speed. I just have to take care of it and my team does as well, and we’ll put it together to go win.
Do you know how many Xfinity races you will do this year?
I don’t.
Do you want to do as many as you can?
I don’t know. The last time, my teammate wrecked me on the oval. So I don’t know how many more I want to do. But I love them. I think it’s fun. I enjoy going back to theoriginal car. It’s good.
I’m curious: Are you a Commanders fan or a Panthers fan?
Washington Commanders fan.
But you grew up in North Carolina.
I couldn’t care less about any Carolina sports. I like the Hornets a little bit. But I’m Washington all the way.
Speaking of football, you’ve talked about having an art collection. In collecting art, do you have any sports art or football art?
I have some football art, actually. I have a couple cool pieces. I think I have a game ball as well — I probably stole it from [my grandfather] Coach’s house, honestly. But I have some cool stuff in there. I guess not that much sports art besides my racing art.
I know you’ve been racing forever. But did you ever wish that you were like 6-foot-10 (Gibbs is listed, generously, at 5-foot-7)?
Yes. I’ll tell you why. Because my brothers and my cousins are all super big kids. Both my younger brothers are bigger than me now, so I guess that means I’m really small, which doesn’t help. But I’m not the smallest in the Cup Series. I don’t think people know that. There’s other smaller guys than me. I always get picked on for being small. But there’s some small dudes out there.
But your family is a bunch of football players. So are you like, “Where’s my size?”
I missed out on that. To be a little taller would be nice. But whatever.
Did you ever want to play football, but you’re like, “I don’t have the size for it”?
That was more like when I played Pop Warner Football when I was younger. And that was more when you’re younger and you’re kind of all the same height as kids. There’s usually that one super-tall kid. But besides that, I didn’t play at all. I actually grew up racing bicycles and that was my dream to go racing in the Tour [de France].
When you watch football, do you think of it like a coach?
No. I’m not skilled — I don’t know enough about football plays and all that to really know, honestly, how that works. But I definitely am a Washington fan all the way. Of course. My grandfather won three Super Bowls with them. Why not?
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including more than 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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