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Today's Featured Commentary Joe Gibbs Racing Continues XFINITY Series Dominance
Potts' Shots
by John Potts
Very interesting XFINITY race at Iowa last Sunday afternoon.
Over all the years I’ve been following and officiating motorsports, there have been many times when somebody or some team figured something out and preceded to blow everybody else away until people caught up with them. There have been the Kiekhaefer teams way back in the 1950s, progressing to the Wood Brothers, the Pettys, Junior Johnson, and so many others at one time or another. I’m sure I’d forget someone if I tried to mention all of them.
At times, it was NASCAR that caught up with them like Jeff Gordon’s “T-Rex” Chevrolet at the Winston so many years back. Apparently, that car was right up against the end of the rule book but fit the letter of the rules. They were allowed to run it, but were instructed not to bring it back.
Then, of course there were Smokey Yunick’s famous escapades including the one where they took the entire fuel delivery system, including the tank, off the car and then told him he couldn’t run it.
According to the story, Smokey fired it up and drove the car all the way back to his shop.
This "tug of war" has happened in nearly all racing series of any kind at one time or another. Take the domination of the two Ken Black Camaros in NHRA’s Pro Stock division. Since the sanctioning body went from carburetors to electronic fuel injection for the 2016 season, nobody but Jason Line or Greg Anderson has had so much as a smell of first place.
Obviously these guys and Ken Black were working on it all winter, came up with the answer and it's been dominance ever since. Anderson admitted last week that everybody else is getting closer but it’s been a long, hard pull for them to catch up.
What impressed me about last week’s XFINITY race was that it put a big stamp on the prevailing opinion that Joe Gibbs Racing has figured something out in NASCAR that nobody else knows -- that’s why they’re kicking everybody else’s tails in two series. They took a driver in Hornish who hadn’t been in a race car for over six months and that driver didn’t just win the race, he completely dominated it.
Agreed, Sam Hornish is one terrific wheelman – an Indy 500 and three IndyCar titles to his credit - but there has to be some reason he’s been out of a ride in NASCAR for a while. He jumped in that JGR car and right off was the class of the field. No one else was even close.
So what is it that JGR has figured out, and just who figured it out?
Who knows – maybe Kyle Busch thought it up while he was watching the races from the couch over the first part of last season. But whatever it is, the rest of NASCAR's got a long, hard pull ahead to reel JGR back into view.
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