NASCAR: JGR need to make a long-term offer, but not to Kyle Busch

Joe Gibbs Racing need to make a long-term contract offer to one of their NASCAR Cup Series drivers, but Kyle Busch is not that driver.

Kyle Busch’s contract status has been the focal point of this year’s NASCAR Cup Series silly season, and it appears as though we are finally nearing his decision.

Busch has been with Joe Gibbs Racing as the driver of the #18 Toyota since the 2008 season, but after the 2021 campaign, Mars Wrigley announced that the 2022 season would be their last as the #18 team’s primary sponsor.

The 37-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada native signing a contract extension was still seen as little more than a formality, but that has proven not to be the case. He admitted back in April that it could very well be “goodbye” if replacement sponsorship wasn’t found, and little progress has been made in that sponsorship search.

There was one promising development which emerged back in the spring, but a deal with that prospective sponsor ultimately fell through.

Busch has admitted that he would be willing to take a pay cut to remain where he is, though he also admitted quite early on that he was in contact with other teams about potential opportunities elsewhere.

While Joe Gibbs Racing have still offered Busch a new deal to compete in 2023, Busch says that he has offers from multiple teams, and there are many who believe that the 2022 season will end up being his 15th and final season with the team.

Bottom line, Kyle Busch’s situation appears to be out of Joe Gibbs Racing’s control at this point. Their focus needs to move elsewhere: Christopher Bell.

If they want to sign one of their drivers to a long-term contract extension, Bell needs to be that guy, and they need to get something done sooner rather than later to avoid a similar situation in the near future.

Among the three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers who qualified for the playoffs, Bell finished highest in the regular season point standings, top five finishes, top 10 finishes, and average finish, and he did it after overcoming a disastrous start to the season, which is just his second season behind the wheel of the #20 Toyota.

In the season’s first five races, Bell sat no higher than 29th place in the point standings, and what was a second place finish in the fifth race at Atlanta Motor Speedway ended up being a 23rd place finish as a result of a last-lap penalty. In those first five races, he didn’t officially finish higher than 10th.

Despite the early struggles, Bell ended up ascending to as high as sixth place and finished the regular season in seventh, and he won the race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, giving him a victory and a playoff berth in each of his first two seasons behind the wheel of the #20 Toyota.

As of now, Bell is only considered to be “expected to return” to the team in 2023 — the same status he inexplicably held throughout much of the offseason between the 2021 and 2022 seasons.

We all know that Joe Gibbs Racing want Ty Gibbs to be in one of their four Toyota Camrys in the near future. Whether that comes in 2023 as Busch’s replacement or in 2024 as someone else’s replacement remains to be seen, but pretty much everybody at this organization and at Toyota Racing Development sees his eventual promotion as a huge part of the company’s future.

But consider the fact that at 27 years old, Bell is eight years older than Gibbs, all while being a decade younger than any of the team’s other three current drivers, including two quadragenarians in Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin.

You simply can’t ignore that part of the youth movement, especially considering what he has already done at the Cup level, and failing to give him a long-term deal could prove costly.

Let’s not forget that Joe Gibbs Racing very well could have lost Bell after the 2020 season; it’s not like he is tied to the organization quite to the extent that the team’s owner’s grandson is.

With the then Joe Gibbs Racing-affiliated Leavine Family Racing shutting down, they effectively needed to make room for Bell, and they unfortunately had to do so by cutting Erik Jones, who was then just 24 years old himself.

While that decision was seen as justified, considering they effectively needed to pick between one or the other since none of the veterans were nearing the end of their NASCAR careers, losing Bell for any reason from this point forward would not be.