NASCAR: Did Joe Gibbs Racing hit a home run?

Did Joe Gibbs Racing hit a home run by promoting a winless NASCAR Truck Series driver in Harrison Burton to their Xfinity Series team?

It’s not often that a full-time driver for a top-tier team can finish in 12th place in a racing series that features 11 full-time drivers, not win a single race all year and be promoted to another top-tier team — at a higher level of competition, no less.

But this scenario is exactly what happened with Harrison Burton.

As an 18-year-old rookie in the NASCAR Truck Series a year ago, the Huntersville, North Carolina native competed for Kyle Busch Motorsports, arguably the top team at NASCAR’s third highest level.

More from Xfinity Series

He started off the season strong and found himself just six points out of the lead of the championship standings in second place following the first three races.

He showed his potential early.

But the remainder of the season saw him fall out of not only second place but the playoff picture, and he ended up failing to win a race. His struggles, along with those of teammate Todd Gilliland, who did end up winning a race before the season ended after also failing to qualify for the playoffs, drew the ire of team owner Kyle Busch, who stated that his drivers “ain’t doing shit” in top-tier equipment.

Burton ended the season with just 12 laps led out of the 3,206 laps he completed. By comparison, Busch competed in five races and won all five, leading 575 of the 795 laps in those five races. He hired former full-time Cup Series driver Greg Biffle, who had last competed in the Truck Series in 2004, for one race, and Biffle won that one race, leading 18 of its 167 laps.

With just one win by a full-time driver all year long, Kyle Busch Motorsports led the series in wins with seven in 23 races. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that Busch didn’t bring back Burton or Gilliland for the 2020 season. But what was somewhat of a surprise is that Burton was promoted, not fired.

After it was announced that Christopher Bell would be promoted from the Joe Gibbs Racing Xfinity Series team to the Joe Gibbs Racing-affiliated Leavine Family Racing Cup Series team, Burton landed a ride as his replacement behind the wheel of the #20 Toyota.

This was and continues to be a big seat to fill. Bell led the Xfinity Series in victories in both of his full-time seasons, winning a rookie record seven races in 2018 before winning eight more races in 2019. He earned 15 victories over these two seasons. Nobody else earned more than eight.

Meanwhile, Burton made the first nine starts of his Xfinity Series career with the team in 2019, and he recorded only one top five finish.

But Burton wasn’t the only scrutinized hire by Joe Gibbs’s Xfinity Series team ahead of the 2020 season. Replacing Bell was hard enough, but the team opted to go with three full-time drivers instead of two.

Brandon Jones, who drove alongside Bell in 2018 and 2019 and won just one race, was brought back, and they also brought in Riley Herbst, who has never even competed full-time in the Truck Series.

Entering the 2020 season, these three drivers had just one victory in a combined 246 Xfinity Series and Truck Series starts, and that one victory was in the 178th start by the most experienced driver, Jones. He accounted for 181 of these 246 starts on his own.

But three races into the season, Burton has exceeded expectations.

The 19-year-old leads the championship standings with three top five finishes and a series-best average finish of 2.67, which is twice as good as the second best (RSS Racing’s Ryan Sieg at 5.33).

After opening the season with a second place finish at Daytona International Speedway, he finished in fifth at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and then found victory lane for the first time at Auto Club Speedway. He has already more than quadrupled his Truck Series laps led total from last year with 49 laps led.

Say what you will about the superiority of Joe Gibbs Racing’s equipment. And, admittedly, a lot of it is true; Jones took the pole position at Auto Club Speedway and dominated the race, and Herbst finished in a career-high second place.

But right now they sit in sixth and 11th place in the championship standings, respectively, which is right around where you’d expect given their pedigrees and the level of competition throughout the rest of the field at this point in the season.

Meanwhile, Burton is already winning.

What initially looked to be a move of desperation could prove to be a home run for Joe Gibbs Racing. With Burton being only 19 years old, there is no rush to get him to the Cup Series, and right now, there aren’t any available spots within Gibbs’s Cup Series team or the affiliated Leavine Family Racing team anyway.

It’s far too early to know for sure, but the fact that he is already winning shows that he is on the right track to develop into a potential star, and with enough patience, that could translate to NASCAR’s top level.

So far, this move has paid off.

Next. Top 10 NASCAR drivers of all-time. dark

How will Harrison Burton fare throughout the rest of the 2020 NASCAR Xfinity Series season? Will he be a true championship contender, and what does his future look like beyond 2020?

Home/Xfinity Series