I’ve watched a lot of racing in the last two decades and seen many race-winning moves in my time, and what Ty Gibbs did on the final lap of Saturday’s (Oct. 29) Dead On Tools 250 was one of the most aggravating moves I’ve ever witnessed.
Brandon Jones and Gibbs raced hard, nothing wildly outside the normal Martinsville Speedway beating and banging — particularly for a playoff cutoff race. In the race’s closing stages, the restart advantage was clearly in favor of the driver lined up as the second car on the inside. Jones lined up directly behind Gibbs on the restart, with Noah Gragson lined up in the outside front row.
By the time the trio reached the middle of turns 1 and 2, Jones was on the inside of Gibbs, who was sandwiched between Jones and Gragson. I didn’t have a problem with this move and didn’t all race long. The trio traveled down the backstretch three-abreast. Gibbs ran Gragson a little high, got a run off turn 4 and was on Jones’ bumper by the start-finish line.
But the aggravating and unforgivable move came seconds later, after every move on the track had been defendable by every driver to this point.
Gibbs squared up the nose of his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota with the back bumper of Jones’ JGR Toyota and sent the No. 19 into the turn 1 wall. The wreck was a clear sign that Gibbs had zero intentions of trying to pass Jones cleanly, buckling the nose of the No. 54 car and leaving Jones against the wall with a pancaked left rear.
The most frustrating part of this situation was that Gibbs didn’t have to win. Gibbs scored enough points and enough cars had dropped out that a win wasn’t necessary for him to advance to the Championship 4. Jones needed to win to advance, so he had been aggressive with Gibbs on the final restart and those before.
Saturday wasn’t Gibbs’ first incident in 2022 of making questionable decisions. At Las Vegas Motor Speedway, on lap 3, he didn’t cut Ryan Sieg a break and essentially wrecked the No. 39 for no reason. If he had more patience, Gibbs would have passed Sieg without issue in a lap or two.
At Richmond Raceway, Gibbs tried his darndest to shove John Hunter Nemechek out of his way with two laps to go. Then, on the final lap, he was door-to-door with Nemechek. Gibbs made little effort to make the corner and pass cleanly. The old adage “eight tires are better than four” was tested successfully on JHN, who was in JGR’s No. 18.
Was combing through videos I took this weekend…
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