(Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)

Joe Gibbs Racing Faces Problematic Situation After COTA

Originally posted on Athlon Sports | By Jonathan Howard | Last updated Mar 2, 2026 1:14 PM ET

Three weeks into the NASCAR Cup Series season, and the drivers at Joe Gibbs Racing have not had the most ideal start to the season. Out of all four drivers in the JGR garage, none of them are in the provisional Chase standings.

Ty Gibbs is the top Joe Gibbs Racing driver in the points standings at the moment. He sits 17th in points, and after COTA, jumped up 16 spots in the standings. He is a distant 121 points behind Tyler Reddick.

This season, NASCAR has swapped back to a Chase format. A similar system to what the sport had between 2004 and 2013, the top 16 drivers in points after 26 races will make the postseason. Right now, JGR has no drivers in the picture.

After Ty Gibbs, Denny Hamlin is next up in the standings for JGR. He is 23rd in points, but only five points behind his younger teammate. Christopher Bell is 24th in points, a single digit behind Hamlin. Chase Briscoe, who almost flipped his luck on Sunday, is 27th in points and 140 points behind leader Tyler Reddick.

Not Time to Panic for Joe Gibbs Racing

Denny Hamlin races alongside Tyler Reddick during the Daytona 500. (Photo by Jeff Robinson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Three races is a relatively small sample size. Still, teams have stressed the importance of avoiding early-season mistakes in this new system. Then again, Gibbs just jumped up from 33rd to 17th in the standings in one race.

There is no reason to panic for Joe Gibbs Racing right now. However, momentum is a real thing in motorsports. You can see it with Reddick and the No. 45 team at 23XI Racing. Qualifying matters so much in the Next Gen era, and having good track position is a must if you want to be successful at short tracks like Phoenix.

So, one bad finish can compound into another. Three bad finishes in a row can get a driver stuck in the first half of the qualifying order. Typically, tracks get faster throughout qualifying as rubber is laid on the track. So, going early is a detriment to drivers most of the time.

Another thing that the JGR drivers have going for them, 8th place to 27th place, where Briscoe sits, are only separated by 40 points. That can be made up in one race, depending on how other drivers perform.

Denny Hamlin is the only JGR driver without a top-five finish this season, but finished P10 at COTA. Gibbs won a stage and finished P4 this Sunday. Bell finished P3. Briscoe had a good car and would have likely had a top-10 finish if his car hadn't had a mechanical failure.

It has been a rough start to the season for Joe Gibbs Racing. Right now, it can be written off to coincidence. Bad luck. The margins are thin. If this pattern continues over the next few weeks, and the JGR drivers struggle to earn stage points and good finishes, it might be cause for concern.

This article first appeared on Athlon Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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