Joe Gibbs Racing stands today as one of NASCAR’s high-standard organizations, yet the irony is that its founder, Joe Gibbs, never entered the sport with a lifelong passion for racing. His professional identity was forged on football fields, not speedways.
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Gibbs built his legacy as the head coach of the Washington Redskins (now Commanders), serving from 1981 to 1992 and again from 2004 to 2007. Across 16 seasons, he guided the franchise to nine playoff appearances, five NFC Championship titles, and three Super Bowl victories. Along the way, he even earned NFL Coach of the Year honors in 1982 and 1983 and became the only head coach to win Super Bowls with three different starting quarterbacks.
While he founded Joe Gibbs Racing with his sons in 1992, Gibbs has openly acknowledged that racing never sat at the center of his interests. He entered stock car racing as a complete outsider, learning the ropes from the ground up.
The doubts intensified further when the team failed to win a race in its inaugural season, prompting a moment of self-reflection. “That first year I said, ‘Oh my gosh. Are we in something over our heads here?’” Gibbs admitted.
Long before NASCAR entered the picture, Gibbs’ world revolved around traditional sports, not racing. In a recent conversation with Kyle Petty, he explained that football, basketball, and baseball had been his early life interests.
As he put it, “My big interest was sports. It was football, basketball, and baseball. Now, I wasn’t a real good athlete. I tell everybody the only award I ever got in sports was most improved. But I loved it, and I was that was kind of my life here in North Carolina.”
“Had nothing to do with cars. And so then when I got to be 16, my uncle had moved to California, got a great job, and so everybody started following him out to California,” he added. Southern California in the late 1950s and early 1960s revolved around hot rods and drag racing, and Gibbs found himself drawn into that culture.
He owned a variety of hot rods, none of them expensive, noting that the most he ever paid was $800. From there, drag racing followed, and with it came a growing appreciation for cars and the hands-on work required to keep them running.
While Gibbs discovered motorsports later in life, his sons embraced it from an early age. Both J.D. and Coy Gibbs developed a deep fascination with racing, and that enthusiasm eventually led the family toward NASCAR. The turning point came after his eldest son graduated from college and asked whether they could pursue racing together as a family venture.
At the outset, resources were scarce. Gibbs recalled that they had no cars, no drivers, and no infrastructure. However, things moved forward when Gibbs approached Norm Miller at Interstate Batteries with the proposal, and he agreed. That decision laid the foundation for JGR.
Since then, Joe Gibbs Racing has rewritten the record books, bagging five NASCAR Cup Series championships and 227 Cup wins.
