NASCAR Truck Series: Is Ty Gibbs ready for a promotion?

Ty Gibbs earned his eighth career ARCA Menards Series win at Memphis International Raceway last week. Is he ready for a promotion to the NASCAR Truck Series?

Although he has only competed part-time due to age restrictions, Ty Gibbs will end this ARCA Menards Series season with the most victories. The grandson of NASCAR Hall of Famer and current team owner Joe Gibbs has won eight times in ARCA, including six times this year.

Gibbs has won the last two races at Winchester Speedway and Memphis International Raceway. Is he ready for a promotion to the Truck Series? He has been dominant this ARCA season, leading more than twice the amount of laps of any other driver. He also has gone on multiple winning streaks.

He finished in second place in the ARCA Menards Series Sioux Chief Showdown, a 10-race championship within the main ARCA schedule. Sam Mayer won that title, and Mayer is already set to drive part-time with JR Motorsports in the Xfinity Series in 2021 before driving full-time for the team in 2022.

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Gibbs’s eight career ARCA wins have come at a multitude of different race tracks. He has won twice at the four-turn, 1.25-mile (2.012-kilometer) World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway oval in Madison, Illinois, a track which annually hosts the Truck Series.

This season, Gibbs dominated the ARCA race at Pocono Raceway, leading 65 of the 80 laps in that race. The three-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) oval in Long Pond, Pennsylvania hosted a Cup Series doubleheader this year as well as one Xfinity Series race and one Truck Series race. Moreover, he won there in his first start, which is not an easy feat at the track nicknamed “The Tricky Triangle.”

The COVID-19 pandemic led to ARCA racing at Kentucky Speedway this year. In that race, Gibbs led the most laps, saved his car after contact with Michael Self, and overtook Bret Holmes to win his first race on a 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) oval.

Although Kentucky Speedway will not host any NASCAR races in 2021, Gibbs’s victory there demonstrated that he can wheel a race car on a 1.5-mile track, which will be vital as he ascends the NASCAR ladder.

Gibbs’s 18th birthday is tomorrow, so he will be eligible to compete on all tracks on the main three NASCAR series schedules after that. He has proven that he is ready for a promotion to the Truck Series, so what’s the holdup?

Toyota Racing Development (TRD) have a conundrum on their hands. Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr., and Denny Hamlin all are accomplished Cup Series drivers, and Christopher Bell is set to replace Erik Jones at Joe Gibbs Racing next season.

While Hamlin and NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan joined forces to form a chartered Cup Series team with Bubba Wallace as their driver, it is a multi-year deal.

Beyond those five cars, there are not other chartered Cup Series Toyota teams. Gibbs is still a teenager, so his Cup Series days are at least a few years into the future.

In the Xfinity Series, Joe Gibbs Racing field full-time entries for Harrison Burton, Brandon Jones and Riley Herbst. Burton and Herbst are rookies, and neither one has been rumored to move up to the Cup Series yet. As for Jones, he wants to win more races in the Xfinity Series before racing full-time in the Cup Series.

In the Truck Series, Kyle Busch Motorsports field two full-time entries for rookies Christian Eckes and Raphael Lessard. Eckes made the playoffs, but neither driver has won this year, so they should stay in the Truck Series for at least another year.

Kyle Busch Motorsports also field another full-time entry, which Chandler Smith has driven the most this year. Smith turned 18 earlier this year. In 32 career ARCA starts, he has nine wins, 22 top five finishes, and 29 top 10 finishes. Furthermore, in 12 Truck Series starts, he has five top five finishes and six top 10 finishes with a career-best finish of second place at Bristol Motor Speedway.

So it’s a logjam as to where Ty Gibbs will compete in 2021. It would be an enormous surprise for Gibbs to leave his grandfather’s team, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. left Dale Earnhardt, Inc. and Ty Dillon competes in the Cup Series for Germain Racing, not Richard Childress Racing, his grandfather’s team. Nevertheless, Gibbs confirmed he is a Joe Gibbs Racing driver, not a TRD driver.

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Is Ty Gibbs ready for a promotion to the Truck Series? Yes. Will he compete in that series full-time next year? Time will tell. He is set to in the ARCA race at the Illinois State Fairgrounds on his 18th birthday tomorrow afternoon at 1:30 p.m. ET. Live TV coverage is set to be provided by MAVTV, and the race is also set to be shown live on TrackPass on NBC Gold.

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