Joe Gibbs Racing still considering potential to expand to four Sprint Cup teams in 2010
Joe Gibbs Racing President J.D. Gibbs (center) talks with driver Denny Hamlin (left) and crew chief Mike Ford earlier this season. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
SONOMA, Calif. – Joe Gibbs Racing President J.D. Gibbs is still open to the idea of four Sprint Cup teams if the sponsorship can be found for 2010 by the end of the summer.
“We can still plug in a fourth team,” Gibbs said Sunday at Infineon Raceway. “The problem is from an economy standpoint. You can probably get a few [sponsors] to mix and match, but we don’t have a full fourth ready to go from a sponsor standpoint.
“We’re in no hurry. If we have to wait a year, that’s fine. You have got to have the right driver, the right core group and the right sponsor. But if that happened, we could do it pretty quick. I wouldn’t cross it off for next year but at the same time we’re not going to force it.”
When asked if that fourth car could be Indy Racing League star Danica Patrick, Gibbs laughed. JGR uses IMG to help it find sponsors and Danica is represented by IMG.
“I don’t know what she wants to do,” Gibbs said. “Does she want to still run what she’s running and dip her toe in the water, does she want to do the whole thing? … I think it would be great for the sport wherever she goes.
“I don’t think she would want to be part of a [new] fourth team [here].”
In addition to a fourth team, JGR also could become a vendor for other teams. JGR did not have a successful affiliate/vendor program with Hall of Fame Racing from 2006-2008, and Gibbs said if JGR did it in the future, it would be a closer relationship.
“We did cars for them, we did motors for them, we did chassis for them, we helped them technically, but there were some areas that we said, ‘Our guys are going to work on our stuff and you guys need to work on our own stuff,’” Gibbs said. “Looking back, we tried to do it by the letter of the law but we weren’t really sure what was the letter of the law as far as separation. We learned from that.”
Gibbs said the team management would have to decide whether such an arrangement would be simply for profit or help the organization run better. He also thinks that adding a fourth team would be more of a priority.
As far as his organization, Kyle Busch has three Cup wins but sits ninth in the series standings, just 11 points ahead of teammate Denny Hamlin. Busch has only a 53-point cushion on 13th-place David Reutimann and a spot in the Chase.
“We’ve just got to do a better job finishing,” Gibbs said. “If we finished where we were running in a lot of the races and capitalize on some of the wins we could have gotten, we would be in pretty good shape.
“We’re not in horrible shape. … The other thing is we have to consistently make gains in the garage to keep up with the other guys.”
