Ty Gibbs experienced his best, earning the 2022 Xfinity Series championship, one week after possibly his toughest time as a NASCAR racer.
Despite having the most laps led, Gibbs had to suffer a dramatic three-wide duel with other title challengers Noah Gragson and Justin Allgaier in the race’s last 25 laps.
With 20 of the 200 laps left, Gibbs finally passed Allgaier for the lead for real, and he held off Gragson by 0.397 seconds to take the victory and the series championship.
A week ago, Gibbs was widely criticised for crashing Brandon Jones, a teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, on the last lap of the Martinsville, Virginia, race, which Gibbs had just won. Jones required the victory to progress, whereas Gibbs was already qualified for the Championship4 at the time.
Similar to how he was received during racer introductions, Gibbs performed a crazy burnout as he enjoyed his victory.
In just 51 starts, Gibbs had won seven times already this year and eleven times overall.
“First off, I just want to say thank you to my team. Every one of these guys, my pit crew, they did an awesome job. They put us here. Great job to my team,” Gibbs said.
“You know, what I did last week was unacceptable, and I apologize once again, but it was unacceptable because we could have had two shots to win this deal, and it was stupid from an organization standpoint. All my fault.
“I can sit here and tell you I’m sorry as much as I can, but it’s not going to fix it. I’ve got to fix my actions. I felt like today I had a good race, felt like I made some good moves. Me and (Allgaier) were racing really hard. I felt like hopefully we put on a great show.”
Chris Gayle, the crew chief for Gibbs, praised his racer because of being able to remain focused despite the accident previous weekend on what was on the line
“Just think how tough you have to be, how resilient you have to be after going through that last week,” Gayle said. “The hardest thing for him was going to be all the stuff leading up to it, man.
“When you got between these two walls on this the race track, that’s where he shined today, man.”
After a slow pit stop on the last stops on Lap 160 put Gragson sixth on the resumption, he had to fight his way back. On a few moments, he was able to decrease the gap between himself and Gibbs to under a half-second, but he wasn’t close enough to a move for the lead.
“Just didn’t have enough for them at the end but it wasn’t for a lack of trying,” Gragson said. “It sure does suck to lose to someone like that but it wasn’t for a lack of effort.”
Landon Cassill came in fourth, followed by Allgaier in third, and A.J. Allmendinger in fifth.
Sheldon Creed, Riley Herbst, Daniel Hemric, Austin Hill, and Sammy Smith made up the final ten.
The last Championship 4 contender, Josh Berry, finished 13th after striking the wall late in the race.
We bring out some of the most well-known NASCAR drivers’ apparels , all of which are available at reasonable costs. Visit our link now if you are interested in the racing clothing collection:
Grand Prix, IndyCar, Ty Gibbs, Joe Gibbs Racing, Noah Gragson, Justin Allgaier Nascar, NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity