While he led the most laps, Gibbs had to fight through a wild three-wide battle with fellow championship contenders Noah Gragson and Justin Allgaier in the final 25 laps.
Gibbs finally cleared Allgaier for the lead for the final time with 20 of 200 laps remaining and held off Gragson by 0.397 seconds to earn the win and the series title.
Just a week ago, Gibbs received nearly universal condemnation for wrecking his Joe Gibbs Racing Brandon Jones on the final lap to win the race at Martinsville, Va. Gibbs was already qualified for the Championship4 at the time while Jones needed the win to advance.
While Gibbs celebrated with a wild burnout after the win, he was greeted with a cascade of boos from fans, much like he did in driver introductions.
The win was Gibbs’ seventh of the season and 11th of his career in just 51 starts.
“First off, I just want to say thank you to my team. Every one of these guys, my pit crew, they did an awesome job. They put us here. Great job to my team,” Gibbs said.
“You know, what I did last week was unacceptable, and I apologize once again, but it was unacceptable because we could have had two shots to win this deal, and it was stupid from an organization standpoint. All my fault.
“I can sit here and tell you I’m sorry as much as I can, but it’s not going to fix it. I’ve got to fix my actions. I felt like today I had a good race, felt like I made some good moves. Me and (Allgaier) were racing really hard. I felt like hopefully we put on a great show.”
Gibbs’ crew chief, Chris Gayle, credited his driver for being able to maintain his focus on what was on the line despite last weekend’s incident.
“Just think how tough you have to be, how resilient you have to be after going through that last week,” Gayle said. “The hardest thing for him was going to be all the stuff leading up to it, man.
“When you got between these two walls on this the race track, that’s where he shined today, man.”
Gragson had to battle back from a slow pit stop during the final stops on Lap 160 that left him eighth on the restart. He managed to get back to second and cut his deficit to Gibbs to under a half-second on a couple off occasions but never got close enough to a pass for the lead.
“Just didn’t have enough for them at the end but it wasn’t for a lack of trying,” Gragson said. “It sure does suck to lose to someone like that but it wasn’t for a lack of effort.”
Allgaier ended up…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Motorsport.com – NASCAR – Stories…