Chris Gabehart, now the competition director of Joe Gibbs Racing following a lengthy stint as crew chief for Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 team, offered his thoughts on the championship format debate that has dominated the NASCAR off-season.
The commentary came from a conversation on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio in which hosts Larry McReynolds and Alan Cavanna asked him about the topic.
Since Joey Logano claimed the championship with the worst statistical aggregation in Cup Series history, there has been no shortage of opinions over ways to fix the format … or outright abolishing it.
As Gabehart puts it, an entertaining format is important but it also has to balance sporting integrity in ways that it currently does not, especially by the end of the season.
“I mean, that’s the focus every year, that every race is about winning, but the difficulty in that is there are so many variables that go into an individual race that are out of the team’s control, things that are different than any other sport you want to talk about,” Gabehart said. “You name it, there’s no sport that comes close to having as many variables in it that a team cannot control as Stock Car racing at the Cup level.
“So that’s really what makes it so different and why you hear all of this playoff angst. It’s not that anyone disagrees with the entertainment value that the playoffs provides, or in my view would even want to change that.
“But you do have to acknowledge the reality of the fact that a caution flag can change your champion. It can be David Starr’s brake rotor exploding like it did for us in 2021 while we’re running down our other teammate, Martin Truex Jr. at Phoenix for our shot to win the championship — it’s clearly going to come down to the 19 or the 11, one of the two. It was a no-brainer, we were checking out from everybody. The brake rotor blows up, the caution comes out, and we come down pit road and next thing you know, Larson wins the championship.
“The problem is, is this really how we want to define our champions because of someone else’s brake rotor blowing up and so many other examples like it? That’s the only issue. We all agree there needs to be an entertainment value of what we currently do. Anyone who contends with that is not being honest with themselves. It’s simply getting the balance right of sport and entertainment that is unique to racing.”
Gabehart is also settling into his new role, which began immediately upon returning from the finale at Phoenix, and saw him have say-so over moving Chris Gayle over to pair with Hamlin at his old No. 11 team but also promoting Tyler Allen from the Xfinity program to work with Ty Gibbs.
The surprise of the new role, Hamlin relationship
“Well, I mean, the word surprise was used but Denny and I talked about a lot of things over a lot of years. That’s how you develop good relationships. So I don’t think it was lost on either one of us that there was a role that needed to be filled to further enhance what it is that we do here at Joe Gibbs Racing on the competition side of things for some time now.
“I mean, we’ve had those conversations a lot. I mean, naturally he’s nearing the end of his career at some point. So we’ve had conversations about that. We’ve had conversations about where l’m at in my career naturally because of that and what the future might look like as those transitions for both of us would to come up whenever they came up.
“So really when you add all that together, we’ve actually talked a lot about it. But naturally, as the year kind of comes to a close and you start looking ahead to 2025 and adding all these things up, these are hard decisions that have to happen and a lot of dominoes have to fall. And once the focus kind of got shifted towards 2025, some of those things got put into place and it really is just about making the whole company better.
“I firmly believe that if I do my new job right, the 11’s going to be better. There’s been a lot of angst and concern about me getting off the pit box from a competitive point of view and how that might affect the team. I’m gonna tell you for sure the 11 team is 100 percent intact. We’re just putting a different leader in there but I’m still right down the hallway and I’ll be really disappointed if the 11’s not every bit as good or better for the 2025 season.”
How is the relationship with Hamlin now?
“I mean, that’s an interesting question. Is he disappointed? Sure. Am I disappointed? Sure. We don’t live in a vacuum where every decision’s 100 percent good or not. This is hard stuff and nothing is easy aboyt it. But the reality is, as professionals, we know that what we’re trying to do is make Joe Gibbs Racing better.
“And it’s these types of decisions that have given Denny a 20-year successful career at this company. These things aren’t easy. There’s never an absolute and this one’s no different. So I think he understands that, and certainly I understand that. It’s a decision that we chose to make for the betterment of the company. And, uh, like I said, I’m confident he’s going to have everything he needs to succeed next year, and then some, that is the goal.”
Why not hire a crew chief from outside JGR?
“You’ve always gotta consider all your options and avenues but as we, you know, a lot of these dominoes did fall fairly late in the season. And as you know, the later you get in the season, the fewer options that are out there that would be worthy of looking outside the pipeline. So what I mean by that is there are so many benefits to growing inside the company. You know, learning the tools, the people the processes.
“I always say where the bathrooms are at, all that stuff, right?, Well, even the most world renowned crew chief in the history of crew chiefing, if he doesn’t work inside this ecosystem it’s gonna take him a long time to figure out where the bathrooms are, where the peoples are, the people who does what processes and procedures, where they are, the tools, etc.
“That’s a short term deficit. I don’t care how good you are, right? So the list was pretty small before we realized that (promoting from) within was gonna be the best way to go and we were open and honest with everybody about that. You would be dumb not to look at all aspects, but it came pretty apparent pretty quick that Tyler was going to be the best fit.”
