NASCAR: The many title droughts Joe Gibbs Racing can end

The Joe Gibbs Racing #54 team is one of the top teams in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and could end a number of droughts by winning the owner championship.

The Joe Gibbs Racing #54 Toyota team has been on a tear the last couple of months in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. The team has won eight of the 19 races that have been contested so far this season, including seven of the last nine.

The team ranks second in the owner standings and has serious potential to end a number of championship droughts by winning the title.

The first win of the season for the #54 team came in race two at the Daytona International Speedway road course, where owner Joe Gibbs’s grandson Ty came away with the victory in his first career start in any one of the three NASCAR national series. Gibbs added another win in race number 12 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

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Kyle Busch continued his series dominance by winning in all five of his starts this season, all in the #54 Toyota, to bring his career win total to 102 victories.

Christopher Bell picked up the most recent win for the team in his first series start since 2019 this past weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The non-win events for the #54 Toyota saw starts by Gibbs (six races), Ty Dillon (four races) and Martin Truex Jr. (one race).

Overall, the “star car” has eight wins, 14 top five finishes and an average finish of 8.47. To compare, Joe Gibbs Racing’s other three cars, driven by full-time drivers Daniel Hemric, Harrison Burton and Brandon Jones, are all winless with a worse average finish.

Cup Series drivers are usually a big part of the success of teams with a part-time driver lineup, but the limit on the number of starts that Cup Series drivers can make has limited the dominance when it comes to the owner championships.

The team that won the driver championship also won the owner championship in three of the five seasons since the playoffs were added to the Xfinity Series in 2016. The exceptions were in 2017, when it was won by the #22 Penske Racing (now Team Penske) Ford, and in 2018, when it was won by the #00 Stewart-Haas Racing with Biagi-DenBeste Ford.

William Byron won the 2017 title in the #9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet while Tyler Reddick won the 2018 title in the same car.

In the years leading up to the playoffs, having an owner champion different than the driver champion seemed like a given. The #22 team won three consecutive owner championships from 2013 and 2015, led by drivers Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney.

Austin Dillon won the 2013 title in the #3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, Chase Elliott won the 2014 title in the #9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, and Chris Buescher won the 2015 title in the #60 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.

If the #54 team wins the owner championship this year, it would be Joe Gibbs Racing’s first with a car shared by multiple drivers since 2012.

The #18 Toyota won the title in 2012 with Logano, Denny Hamlin, Michael McDowell, Mark Martin, Ryan Truex and Drew Herring behind the wheel. Full-time Cup Series drivers Hamlin and Logano combined for 25 races that season, something that could never happen today.

Joe Gibbs Racing could also snap another title drought with their full-time drivers being in title contention, despite not yet having a win.

The only time a team won the driver and owner championships with different cars was in 2011, when Roush Fenway Racing won the owner title with the #60 Ford and the driver title with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the #6 Ford. Full-time Cup Series driver Carl Edwards raced the #60 Ford in all but one event — again, something that would never happen today.

The #54 team is currently 35 points behind the #22 team in the owner standings, with Austin Cindric piloting the #22 Ford full-time for Team Penske.

If the playoffs were to start today, the deficit would be 20 points after the reset with playoff points factored in, and the #54 team would rank third. The #16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet, driven full-time by A.J. Allmendinger, would rank second, three points ahead.

A strong points position entering the playoffs and a solid driver lineup could give the #54 team a good chance at advancing to the Championship 4, where a race win could be needed to clinch the title.

With that being said, a victory was not needed for the owner crown in 2017 or 2018. The driver champion, however, has won the finale in four of the five playoff seasons thus far, three times to secure the owner title.

Gibbs has six more races scheduled in the #54 Toyota this year, with Hamlin scheduled to run at Darlington Raceway and John Hunter Nemechek scheduled to race in three events, including the season finale at Phoenix Raceway. The driver of the car is TBD for the other four races remaining on the schedule.

Nemechek has five wins and the points lead through 14 Truck Series races with Kyle Busch Motorsports so far this season, and he has an average finish of 7.33 in three Xfinity Series starts at Phoenix.

Hemric leads the trio of full-time Joe Gibbs Racing drivers so far this season with eight top five finishes, 12 top 10 finishes and an average finish of 10.8. He currently sits in third place in the point standings. Joe Gibbs Racing’s most recent Xfinity Series championship came in 2016, when they won both the driver title and th owner title with Daniel Suarez behind the wheel of the #19 Toyota.

The #54 team is one of the hottest teams in the series right now and would snap a number of championship streaks by winning the owner title this season. The next opportunity for a race win and more points is scheduled for Saturday, August 7 at Watkins Glen International, when the Xfinity Series is scheduled to return from the current three-week hiatus.