Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota have put the NASCAR Cup Series teams representing Chevrolet and Ford on notice as the Round of 12 begins next week at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Christopher Bell and the No. 20 Toyota team won at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night to give JGR wins in all three Round of 16 races. Chase Briscoe won the opener at Darlington Raceway and Denny Hamlin followed that up with a victory at World Wide Technology Raceway last weekend. It was also the 200th time a Toyota won a NCS race.
Toyota Tops on Stat Sheet
Rolling into the Round of 12, Toyota has four drivers already about the cutoff line with three of them from the JGR camp. Hamlin is 26 markers above the line, Bell is 20 and Briscoe is up 10. Bubba Wallace from 23XI Racing has his No. 23 Toyota one point to the good.
In addition to the wins, Toyota teams led 870 of 1,107 laps in the first round.
“Having these three cars winning in the first round, I think it just says a lot the way we feel back in the shop,” said Gibbs in the post-race press conference. “It’s a big deal all the way across the board for us. It means a lot.
“This sport, obviously, when you win like this there are so many people involved.”
Briscoe led laps in his No. 19 JGR Toyota and finished ninth to pad his points into the Round of 12.
“Congrats to Christopher (Bell), ” he said. “Obviously pretty cool that JGR swept that first round, and hopefully we can do that in the next round.”
Bowman Almost Prevailed
Alex Bowman and the No. 48 Chevrolet team came into the Bristol race 15th in Playoff points, 35 markers behind the Cutoff Line. During the race, he raced up front competing in the top five and top 10 positions.
As the laps clicked down, a glimmer of hope appeared when Austin Cindric had a fire in the right front tire area forcing him to pit road under green. The cockpit of his No. 2 Ford filled with smoke and he had to wait until it cleared enough for him to leave pit road.
During this time, Bowman closed within three points of Cindric as he sat on pit road. Once he went back to racing, Cindric was four laps down. However, he finished 30th to move on to the Round of 16 besting Bowman by 10 markers.
“When they told me to leave the pit stall I couldn’t see anything,” Cindric said. “I was hoping there wasn’t anyone with fire extinguishers or anything else like that. It was pretty bad, but it’s going to take me a lot to get out of the car.”
For Bowman, his struggles came on restarts.
“When we had some green-flag runs, I thought our No. 48 Ally Chevy was really good,” Bowman said. “It just cycled really poorly on restarts. I would drive off into turn one and just hope to make the corner.
“For whatever reason, it just wouldn’t take off and then after five laps or so, it would go again. I just couldn’t figure it out if it was something I was doing.
“I felt like I was cleaning the tires off too much sometimes, so I don’t really know what we lacked there.
Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Teams Sweep Round of 16 with Bristol Win