HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — The NASCAR Cup Series is in the midst of 28 straight weekends of racing, with the lone off-weekend on the entirety of the 38-race schedule coming six weeks ago during the Easter holiday.
Some in the NASCAR garage talk about managing their time and their overall schedule to ensure the grind of competing in the longest season in all of sports doesn’t wear them down.
Ty Gibbs, driver of the No. 54 Interstate Batteries Toyota Camry XSE for Joe Gibbs Racing, is not one of those people.
“Honestly, the Cup schedule is not that bad. Everybody makes it seem like it’s intense, but I think it’s pretty manageable,” said the 22-year-old Gibbs, currently in his third full-time Cup season.
“I also race dirt stuff, so I probably have about 40-50 more races this year. I enjoy racing – all kinds of racing – and I think the more I do it, the sharper I am, so I should do as much as I can.”
Gibbs made his 100th career Cup Series start last Sunday in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway. It was a milestone moment that also served as the halfway mark of the Cup Series’ regular season. Thirteen races are in the books and just 13 remain before the NASCAR Playoffs begin Aug. 31 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.
Currently 25th in the championship standings, Gibbs is eyeing a playoff spot by either breaking into the top-16 in points or by winning a race to automatically punch his playoff ticket. The charge toward a points haul and, ideally, a win begins anew this Sunday in the Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway.
The 1.333-mile, concrete oval is relatively flat, with corners banked at just 14 degrees. Those corners, however, are wide, allowing drivers to use multiple lanes to navigate traffic and find the quickest line around the track.
“There are a couple of bumps that are pretty sketchy at Nashville. Off of (turn) four there are a couple of dips, like swells, down there. You have to stay away from those and kind of just go wide,” Gibbs said. “Last year, we were running fourth, fifth all day, and then got caught up in a wreck near the end. So if we can stay out of the wrecks, I feel like we can win.”
Three multi-car accidents in the last 25 laps of last year’s Nashville race collected a total of 15 cars, including Gibbs. That experience, combined with his 14th-place finish in his first Cup Series race at Nashville in 2023, has led Gibbs to pinpoint the ultimate key to success in Music City.
“Track position,” Gibbs said. “You’ve got to have good track position all day, and that comes from having a well-executed day. You want to be fast, obviously, but you’ve got to have good pit stops and good restarts, and you’ve got to stay consistently fast.
“You can come from the back a little bit, but it’s really hard to pass. People throw blocks so easily. If you can be out front, you want to stay there. That’s where guys are good.”
Gibbs has proven to be more than good. He won in his very first NASCAR Xfinity Series start – Feb. 20, 2021 at the Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway road course – and then won the championship in 2022 during his first full season thanks to seven victories. Upon moving to Cup in 2023, Gibbs handily won the Rookie of the Year title.
At Nashville, Gibbs sports the bright green colors of JGR’s founding partner, Interstate Batteries. The leading replacement battery brand in the United States has been with JGR since its inaugural season in 1992. Now in its 34th year, it is the third-generation Gibbs carrying the torch for the most tenured team partnership in all of NASCAR.
“Interstate Batteries has been a part of my family’s team since the very beginning,” Gibbs said. “I’ve grown up with them. It’s cool to have such a long-standing partnership with them and to be able to carry on their legacy in NASCAR.”
