The unjustified criticism of Ty Gibbs - It’s just a run of bad luck
Recently Ty Gibbs has been the subject of much criticism that is truly undeserved. The last races of 2024 and the first races of 2025 have been underwhelming for sure but they are not his fault. Having downright awful luck is the factor. Let’s not forget Ty is the 2022 Xfinity series champion, with 12 wins in the series, including 7 in his championship winning season. He also is the only driver in the modern era (since 1972) to get his first career win in a national series debut. He became the 6th of currently only 7 drivers ever to win an Xfinity series race on debut.
Ty showed a lot of promise in 2023 winning rookie of the year and earning impressive results for a rookie including 10 top 10s and 4 top 5s including is first ever top 5 at Pocono. 2024 looked to be more of the same with 5 top 5s to start in the first 6 races, including a new career best of 3rd at Circuit of the Americas. In that stretch the first race it seemed he had a chance to win was at Bristol, the spring race in 2024 saw insane tire wear which Ty handled well, winning both Stage 1 and 2, leading the second most laps with 137, a career high. His impressive run continued with a 2nd place finish at Darlington in the spring race and a 3rd at the Chicago Street Race, leading the most laps at 17 of 58. A 3rd at Michigan and 5th at Daytona were the final pieces needed for Ty to make the 2024 playoffs, his first playoff appearance and along with teammate Martin Truex Jr was one of only 2 drivers to make the playoffs without a win. All these impressive performances showed a win was coming soon, would it be in the 2024 playoffs?
The 2024 playoffs began with average results, a 17th at Atlanta, 22nd at Watkins Glen and a 15th at Bristol. All this wasn’t good enough to advance with Ty being eliminated at the end of the Bristol night race that was completely dominated by Kyle Larson. Ty got a pit road speeding penalty which hurt him and cost him the chance to race at the front and go for stage points and a better race finish. The next week at Kansas Ty got his final top 10 and top 5 of 2024 with a 5th place finish. The next race at Talladega he finished 13th, shockingly this was his last time finishing higher than 30th. The next 5 races were a disaster, 35th at the Charlotte Roval, 30th at Las Vegas, 36th at Homestead, 32nd at Martinsville and 40th at Phoenix. Each one of these results were caused by different factors: Charlotte Roval was a transmission failure and a DNF. Homestead and Martinsville were also transmission failures. Las Vegas was a spin and he was multiple laps down and lastly was a lap 2 crash at Phoenix. I look at these and wonder how people put these on Ty? 2025 has been more of the same. Daytona being the high point with a 16th place finish which is kinda whatever, anything can happen at a Superspeedway like that so it’s not the worst. Atlanta was 32nd place after a crash next a 34th at Circuit of the Americas after getting heavy damage in the first corner when all the field hit together trying to make the turn. Lastly and most recently was a failure with the tire or brake going into turn 3 at Phoenix resulting in a 25th place result.
People have been quick to blame Ty himself for this. He has been struck with some awful luck in that stretch, hopefully Las Vegas will be a turnaround whether it’s just getting a solid result or not mechanical failures something has to go right for him sooner than later. He’s still young, he’s only 22 and made just 87 starts including 15 to start his career which were fill in races for Kurt Busch who was out due to a concussion so he’s only made 72 starts as a full time Cup driver. Give him a bit of a break. Current cup stars Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney and William Byron also took a while to get their first wins each taking 2-3 season. Give Ty a break here. I know he has a lot of undeserved haters and criticism because of the fact his grandfather owns the team he races for which is quite unfair to blame him for and hate him for, he’s a true talent and even if he races for the team his grandfather owns he still deserves to race and has the talent to back it up, he’s not some untalented bum taking up a seat at a top team.
Ultimately I believe in Ty, he’s someone who is champion material for the Cup series, he's someone who’s going to win a lot of races, let’s just give him a chance and let this play out. All he needs is a few good runs and everyone will forget this awful stretch. It's not been an enjoyable run as a fan of his but I know in the end it will make that first win Ty gets just that much more meaningful