Before the accolades of the 2024 season could be handed out to the drivers at the Banquet, the Joe Gibbs Racing team announced a few shake-ups for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Season. Chris Gabehart, a stalwart with Denny Hamlin for half a dozen seasons, will pass the baton to Chris Gayle while stepping into the shoes of the organization’s competition director.
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Gayle, who has been crew chief for Ty Gibbs for a couple of seasons, is no stranger to JGR as a team and a veteran driver like Hamlin. His tenure with the team started in 2003 as an engineer. From there, he climbed the ladder to crew chief in 2013 and has since racked up 37 Xfinity series victories, working with notable drivers like Gibbs, Kyle Busch, and Erik Jones.
Gayle also played an important role in Jones’ Cup Series ventures, where the duo won two races in four seasons. Subsequently, he shifted gears back to NASCAR’s second tier, steering the #54 team in 2021 alongside drivers like Busch, Ty Dillon, Martin Truex Jr., and John Hunter Nemechek, before Gibbs took to the Cup Series in 2022.
He has also teamed up with Hamlin for eight Xfinity races, snagging a win in 2016, followed by a close second-place finish the following year.
On the flip side, Gabehart entered JGR in 2012 as a race engineer, and by 2016, he had transitioned to a crew chief role through the Xfinity Series for three prosperous seasons.
Ascending to the Cup Series in 2019, he was handed the reins of the #11 team. The partnership hit the ground running, clinching victory at the season-opening Daytona 500 and securing five additional wins, ultimately placing fourth in the final standings.
Under Gabehart’s guidance, Hamlin consistently delivered, never dipping below eighth place, having secured a top-4 championship finish during their first three seasons together. Throughout their six seasons together, the duo racked up 22 wins.
Meanwhile, as Ty Gibbs’s former crew chief transitions to the #11 team, the #54 team remains without a designated crew chief. Nonetheless, Gibbs confessed that parting ways with Gayle would be a tough pill to swallow.
Hamlin was taken aback by the news of the change
According to the #11 driver, he had not requested a new crew chief and is still coming to terms with the update as he spoke to journalists at the Charlotte Convention Center before the NASCAR awards ceremony.
Following the season’s wrap-up at Phoenix Raceway, Hamlin was clued in about the shift earlier in the week. He acknowledged his surprise at the decision but recognized that the team was making choices they believed would benefit the organization.
He remarked, “The first few days was a shock, but I’m moving on. There’s nothing I can do to change anything that happened, and JGR is doing what they feel is best for them and I totally understand that. And if all of our program gets better, the 11 car’s gonna run better as well, right? And I think that all of us, all the teams, knew that we needed to have better results than what we had at the end of the year.”
Hamlin approved of what he’s learned about Gayle’s approach and feels he will add a new flavor to the #11 team.
