Joe Gibbs enjoys it when all of his NASCAR teams are performing well, but when two of them are competing for the championship, things become a little dicey.

Martin Truex Jr. slowly ran down JGR teammate Denny Hamlin late in Sunday’s rain-delayed Cup Series race at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, and the two ran side-by-side for at least two laps, giving Gibbs his most recent hold-your-breath moment.

Truex eventually passed Hamlin with 15 laps remaining and held off Chase Elliott to become the 2021 Cup Series’ first two-time winner.

Gibbs’ greatest fear is that two of his drivers will race for the win and wind up taking each other out.

“Let me say this: it has happened, okay? It’s happened a number of times over the years with us. Of course, what you realize is each one of the drivers, each one of our sponsors, the crew chiefs, everybody on that team is so important to the individual teams,” Gibbs explained.

“We’re back at the race shop, we act as one big team. But when you get to the race track, when it gets down to actually the race, at the end of the race, it is each one of our teams, they want to win for their sponsor and for their career and everything that’s wrapped up in it.”

That is when he starts to worry, Gibbs said.

“That’s the most nervous that I get in the race, is when two of our guys are up front like that,” he said. “The whole time I’m praying, ‘Just don’t wreck each other.’ I got to admit that.”

Kyle Busch and Truex were involved in one of the most recent incidents in 2017 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, when Truex was running as a pseudo-teammate to Busch at Furniture Row Racing.

Busch has led the race for 87 laps. Truex was in eighth place, and on previous restarts, the leader had chosen the outside and the second-place driver had allowed him to drop to the inside. This agreement appears to have come to an end before to the scheduled 160-lap race being restarted on Lap 111.

Truex, the race leader, resumed on the inside, but as the two cars raced into Turn 1, Truex looked to slip up and into Busch. Busch’s car slid down the track after crashing into the outside wall after being hit by Truex.

The race was over for both drivers.

On the other hand, the race at Martinsville was far more orderly.

Truex remarked after the race that Gibbs would be pleased because he and Hamlin “played nice.”

“Here it was obvious that we were quite a bit faster at that point when I caught (Hamlin). He was racing as hard as he could to keep us back,” Truex said. “I knew if I was patient, I was going to be able to complete the pass.

“I’ve never really knocked a teammate out of the way. I don’t know there is a right time to do it. I guess it just depends on how you race each other normally, what your relationship is.”

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