NASCAR Cup Series

Gibbs sees change in NASCAR market

Published Jan. 23, 2012 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

The Coach is embracing change at Joe Gibbs Racing this season.

On the first day of the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour Monday, Joe Gibbs said that his company’s “biggest deal” was the addition of two new crew chiefs — Darian Grubb from Stewart-Haas Racing and Jason Ratcliff, who was promoted from the Nationwide Series side of JGR.

Ratcliff will be paired with Joey Logano and the No. 20 Home Depot team. He has the benefit of working with the driver in the Nationwide Series with a championship-caliber program that Kyle Busch’s crew chief Dave Rogers says Ratcliff was instrumental in helping to build.

Fresh off of winning the Sprint Cup title with Tony Stewart in 2011, Grubb said he was surprised with the amount of “technological support that (JGR) has” and that it was more than he was used to given the company’s direct relationship with Toyota.

Grubb said other than acclimating to the systems at JGR, the biggest challenge with his job transition was convincing his “3-year-old son that Denny Hamlin is his favorite driver.”

“We’re having a lot of fun," Grubb said. “We’re having a lot of meetings. We’re setting the course for what we want to do and we want to go out there and be competitive. That’s the reason I stayed a crew chief. And Denny definitely has the tools to get it done.”

Gibbs added that he’s excited about where the sport is going despite “a tough financial climate." Currently, JGR is flush with sponsorship. Not only did the organization re-sign its three primary sponsors, it added Dollar General and Monster Energy to the roster this season.

Gibbs promoted the business-to-business strength of his programs and sponsors reluctance to “be on a car that just rides around.”

“I think this sport has a lot of value and the creative people that have been (in) it a long time like our sponsors see it,” Gibbs said. “We have a lot of areas that I’m excited about and we can still get a lot of growth in our sport.”

And Gibbs believes that there’s “a huge opportunity to grow our sport” through new markets such as the Northwest and New York proper, social media and “the minority programs that we all have.” Gibbs worked closely with the late Reggie White long before NASCAR had its Drive For Diversity program.

“The Hispanic (market) will be a huge deal,” Gibbs said. “The first African American kid that we really get that wins a championship is going to be a big deal. You’ll see a lot of people excited with that deal. Look what happened in golf. I think that’s going to be big. Danica (Patrick), if she can get up to Cup and win a championship you’re going to see a lot of excitement.

“Social media is going to be a huge deal. One of the most exciting is the social media efforts that we made last year and the early-20s group we had jumped about 20 percent. NASCAR is really engaged in that area and I know we are. We have a lot of stuff that we’re expanding on in social media. I think that’s the future.”

However, Coach admits he doesn’t have a Twitter account.

“I’m not a Twitter guy," he said. "The only thing I have is a cell phone. It says don’t leave a message on this phone, call (Gibbs' assistant) Cindy (Mangum). But everyone else in the building is big on it.”