Barber: A special NASCAR weekend for Joe Gibbs

SONOMA

The second half of the Toyota/Save Mart 350 was more or less a two-car duel. Martin Truex Jr. vs. Kyle Busch. Both of them fierce competitors, both already two-time winners at Sonoma Raceway, both among the sport’s top road-course racers, both in the top three in playoff points entering Sunday’s race. It was a charged competition.

But there was one man at the track who couldn’t lose. It was Joe Gibbs, founder of Joe Gibbs Racing, owner of both cars and benefactor of both race teams.

Thus ended one of the greatest 24-hour periods in the life of a man who has enjoyed a lot of great days. On Saturday night, Gibbs’ 16-year-old grandson Ty scored his first victory in the ARCA Menards Series with a last-lap pass. On Sunday morning, Joe was officially placed on the Sonoma Raceway Wall of Fame. And on Sunday afternoon, his four cars dominated the 350. Truex took first, Busch second, Denny Hamlin fifth and Erik Jones eighth.

After more or less cleaning out the NASCAR safe, Gibbs was characteristically self-deprecating.

“Dave Wilson of Toyota gave an interesting - I was standing with him in the winner’s circle and he goes, ‘Do you realize that Cole (Pearn, crew chief of the No. 19 car) and Martin have won this race three different times with three different owners, and teams?’” Gibbs recalled. “I said, ‘You mean, it’s not the team that gets it done?’?”

Gibbs’ recollection was only slightly off. Truex has indeed won three races at Sonoma now, but Pearn was his chief for only two of those. In any case, Gibbs had a point. Truex is a gifted driver, capable of success in many types of environments. But it’s the team, too. And the team owner.

Since Gibbs entered the racing business in 1992, his garage has won 167 Monster Energy (and the sponsors that came before) Cup Series races and four season championships, and another 158 races and two season titles in the Xfinity series. He will be part of the NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2020. This year, Truex and Busch have taken the checkered flag in eight of 16 races.

Because Gibbs has been doing this so long, it’s easy to forget that he’s probably the most successful two-sport figure in American history.

He was a Pro Football Hall of Fame coach in Washington, excelling in an era replete with great football coaches. He had to battle Bill Walsh’s (and then George Seifert’s) 49ers and Bill Parcells’ Giants every year just to get to the Super Bowl, and did it four times, winning three championships with three different quarterbacks.

“I spent a couple of formative years in the Washington, D.C., area,” said Wilson, the Toyota Racing Development president. “I grew up an Army brat. My father was stationed at the Pentagon. And in that area, back in the ’80s, Joe Gibbs was like a god. He was a hero to our family. So just personally, it took me a little while just to get accustomed to working with him.”

Gibbs’ last NFL season was 1992, overlapping with his first in NASCAR. Who has matched what he has done in two sports? Jim Thorpe? Jim Brown? Bob Hayes? All of them were elite dual-sport athletes. But none of them had long careers in both their games. And none of them bore ultimate responsibility in guiding their teams.

Gibbs is unique, and this was his weekend, a tribute to a man who has spent the past 39 years at the highest level of sports competition.

When I spoke to Wilson at a NASCAR press luncheon Thursday, he called Gibbs “a rainmaker,” marveling at the respect the 78-year-old commands in corporate America, and his ability to bring business leaders together.

“There’s not a single person on that team that works harder than he does,” Wilson said Sunday. “His work ethic, it’s stunning. He’s usually the last guy at the shop. And when he’s not in the shop, he’s out and about, meeting with Toyotas and FedExes, and making sure his partners are getting what they need.”

“I look at Coach, and he leads by example,” said Truex, who is in his first year with Joe Gibbs Racing. Everyone refers to Gibbs as “Coach.”

“You look at somebody Joe’s age, and he could be out golfing and screwing off, and he probably doesn’t have to be doing what he’s doing,” Truex continued. “But he loves it, and it’s his passion. It’s become his life, and he puts everything he has into it. I can tell you that every time I go to the shop, he’s there. And on a plane somewhere meeting with sponsors, he’s there.”

I asked Gibbs which of his two sports brought greater challenges, or greater fulfillment. He said it was hard to compare the two.

“I came up as the technical person in football,” he noted. “I was working on the structure of the offense, calling the plays on the sideline. I was a lot like Cole is here. Because I grew up in it. So the thrill of that, and the agony of defeat. I mean, on that deal you’re shouldering so much. … I came over to racing, and it’s a totally different deal, because I’m not a technical person. So for me it was kind of I kind of pick the people, spend a lot of time with the people, I try to keep the sponsors happy.

“I told everybody the biggest thrill for me is the first of every month, trying to pay the bills. I walk out of meetings, and I go, ‘I gotta go talk to a sponsor.’ I tell the drivers, ‘I’m gonna try to get some money so you guys can throw it away.’?”

At the postrace press conference, Gibbs kept returning to a couple of themes. One was the support of his sponsors. He’s good at fulfilling NASCAR’s peculiar economic necessity. The other one was family.

There’s a story about Gibbs when he was with the Redskins. He was a grinder of a coach, a Jon Gruden type. He tended to watch film into the night and fall asleep on his office couch, wake up the next morning and go right back at it. Gibbs was a bit mono-focused, you might say.

As the story goes, he brought his two sons, J.D. and Coy, to camp one year when they were young kids. Several days later, he was shocked when they tore past his desk, faces dirty and hair disheveled, wearing the same clothes he had last seen them in. He had forgotten the boys were there, and they had basically been living a feral existence.

This story may be exaggerated, but it’s safe to say that life as an NFL coach did not afford Gibbs a lot of quality family time. He has made up for it in racing. J.D., the eldest son, was for years the guiding force behind Joe Gibbs Racing. To hear people in NASCAR talk about him, J.D. Gibbs was a visionary who excelled at finding young talent. He died in January at the age of 49 after a brutal battle with a neurological disease. Joe Gibbs couldn’t stop talking about J.D. on Sunday.

Coy previously drove for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Craftsman Truck and Busch series, and currently helps run the JGR supercross and motocross programs. And now Joe has grandkids winning races.

“I will be honest,” he said. “I was awful uptight with that. When it’s your grandson out there, it’s a whole different emotion. Not that I didn’t get excited today, but last night was a big deal.”

Sunday was a big deal, too, for Martin Truex Jr. and his entire NASCAR team. But when you’re Joe Gibbs, well, the big days tend to run together a bit.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: ?@Skinny_Post.