Over the course of the last 12 races, nine of them have been won by Joe Gibbs Racing drivers; Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards. With Hamlin locked into round two with the victory at Chicagoland, and the other three drivers starting off with top-10 finishes, it seems as though Joe Gibbs Racing is easily the early favorite to take home the championship.
“I think as an organization we’re really strong right now,” Kenseth said on Friday at New Hampshire. “There’s always improvements to be made. You can always be doing better. No matter how good or bad you’re doing, you always look to improve. You always try to look over everything that’s going on and try to figure out how to do that better. Certainly the last few months, the JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) Toyotas have been strong, so hopefully we can continue to improve and continue to keep getting better the next nine weeks and keep getting some results.”
However, while the predictor may want to hand over the hardware, there are other teams that aren’t set to allow that to happen. Team Penske’s Joey Logano feels that his team is right up there with them, citing that they had a fast car at Chicagoland that saw them run inside the top-five with the JGR cars.
“I think we’re really close,” he stated. “I think we’re fighting with them every weekend for wins, so I don’t think we have to take a step back and say, ‘Oh my God, we’re doing something wrong. They’re just so much faster than us.’ They’re not faster than us. There are a lot of circumstances that obviously have to go just right to win these things just like anybody else does, and I feel like we have speed in our race cars so we’re not far off at all.”
Kenseth also cited in his comments that Chevrolet has shown with Hendrick Motorsports (HMS) and Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR). As it should be noted, SHR utilizes the HMS chassis and engines.
“The 4 (Kevin Harvick) and the 41 (Kurt Bush) were unbelievably fast,” he stated. “The 48 (Jimmie Johnson) was way better than they’ve been the last few months.”
Though while nobody will give JGR the clear advantage, it is clear that they’re impressing people with not only their speed, but how they’re able to have that speed across the board with all four drivers.
“It’s not just one car that’s doing it. It’s not two cars that are doing it. It’s all of them, which is impressive,” Kenseth commented. “You don’t see many teams that can put four cars together running fast ever, so that’s pretty impressive with what they’re doing there, and obviously I think they’re top-4 in points here right now. They’re strong, but I don’t look at them as stronger than us.”
Over the years, there has been the lame duck theory used – there always seems to be one team within a four-car organization that doesn’t perform up to expectations. Tony Stewart and Danica Patrick seem to lack at Stewart-Haas Racing while Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick run up front and Kasey Kahne doesn’t seem to be up there with his fellow Hendrick Motorsports teammates.
Kenseth feels that JGR has been able to make it work, though, by having great people spread throughout the organization with four drivers that are capable of getting it done on any week.
“I feel like really before we added a fourth team – I feel like on average the three of us were really strong as well,” Kenseth sounded off. It’s just in the little less than three years I’ve been there, we’ve had Denny (Hamlin) out for half a season with a back and some other things. We’ve had Kyle (Busch) out for half a year with broken legs. We’ve had – you know, we’ve never really had that consistency, but when we’ve all been together for a period of time I feel like we all ran fairly similar and we’re all capable of winning. Obviously adding Carl (Edwards) – Carl is a guy that can win any given week, that can run for championships and do all that stuff.
“I think when we put a fourth team together there – they put it together, the idea of trying to go out and win races and try to win championships and get us all to that point, so I think if they didn’t think it was going to be competitive they would have never done it. I feel like we have a good lineup of people there right now and obviously our cars are running good right now, so there’s really not a reason why we all four shouldn’t run fairly similar.”
