Still running the team

Sporting News, The, Dec 27, 1999 by Lee Spencer

When Joe Gibbs moved from football to racing, he took his formula for winning along with him

The game has changed, but for Joe Gibbs the success formula is the same--and it requires him to put his fate in the hands of others.

"In the NFL, you have quarterbacks," Gibbs says. "In auto sports, you have drivers. Same thing. You give the ball to somebody, and he's got to perform with it. Over here, you give the car to somebody, and he has to perform with it."

Best known for his 12-year tenure as coach of the Redskins, a stint that included three NFL championships and four Super Bowl appearances, Gibbs now is the owner of Joe Gibbs Racing, one of the more successful organizations in NASCAR. Both of his Winston Cup drivers--veteran Bobby Labonte and rookie sensation Tony Stewart-- finished in the top five in the points standings in '99.

Gibbs Racing also will have two cars running next season in the Busch Series, the level just below Winston Cup, and two trucks running in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

Racing or football, Gibbs says his approach is the same.

"When I came into motorsports, I wasn't sure that there would be any comparisons," Gibbs says. "But after being in it for nine years, I can tell you that it's exactly the same. You win with people. You don't win with cars or trick technology. You win with people.

"You have coaches in the NFL and over here you have crew chiefs-very high-paid guys who didn't get what they needed from college, just like I didn't get academically what it takes to be a good football coach. Yon don't get that in a classroom. You get it from working with people and building up expertise over a period of time."

Gibbs, 59, and his wife, Pat, live in Cornelius, N.C., 50 miles southwest of his boyhood home in Mocksville, N.C., and about six miles from his 134,000-square-foot racing complex in Huntersville, N.C. Not so coincidentally, both of Gibbs' sons are involved in the family business. J.D., 30, is president of Joe Gibbs Racing and also competes part time in the NASCAR Busch Series. Coy, 27, was a linebacker at Stanford. He has worked with Gibbs' NHRA teams and recently won the NASCAR Slim Jim All Pro Rookie of the Year award. In the 2000 season, he will run a limited schedule in the MBNA Chevrolet, one of Gibbs' entries in the Craftsman Truck Series.

"When I was in coaching, I never thought the family would eventually get separated because of the job," Gibbs says. "And when we first got in football we weren't, because they were young and they'd go to camp with me. We did a lot together. We'd spend six weeks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania-it was family time. Then when they went off to college, I went off to my job, and Pat went to see them, and we were separated. That's one of the reasons I got out.

"Now, it's a big deal because I work with them every day. [ see them every day, and I don't have the same intense job I had when I was a coach. The crew chiefs have that. They're the ones that have to go on the mad, traveling, working on the cars. Sure, I still travel a lot, but my life is much less structured than it was in football. Over here, it's totally different. I'm doing something new every day."

Gibbs' love for racing can be traced to when his family moved to California in 1955 and he began drag racing. He sold his racing equipment when he made a full-time commitment to football but vowed to return to racing one day.

That came in 1991, while he still was coach of the Redskins. Gibbs opened a modest race shop north of Charlotte with crew chief Jimmy Makar and driver Dale Jarrett. During the first three seasons, the No. 18 Interstate Batteries car won two races, but one was the prestigious Daytona 500, a race often referred to as the Super Bowl of stock car racing.

But after the 1994 season, Jarrett left for Robert Yates Racing, and Gibbs signed Labonte for 1995. In 1999, he added a second team with Stewart. Labonte was runner-up to Jarrett in this season's point standings. Stewart was fourth.

"Everyone says how quickly it's come, but it's been nine years, and we haven't won a championship yet," Gibbs says. "I was in the NFL two years and won a championship. Yeah, this is our best performance. We had two in the top five and we're thrilled about that, but it's been a long, hard struggle.

"Like I've told a lot of people, this is the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. The one thing that's been hard to get used to is there's only one winner and 42 losers. In the NFL on any given week, there's going to be 15 winners and 15 losers. You have to learn to accept the top fives."

A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Gibbs says racing is more difficult than football because of the number of obstacles race teams must overcome to be competitive every week.

"In auto racing, you've got to be good in everything," Gibbs says. "There's a sales side. You have to be able to go out and encourage sponsors to come in and spend millions of dollars so you can run well.

"There's a promotional side. You have to go out and promote what you're doing. There's the engineering side. We have three engineers who are on staff. There's the fabricating shop, the motor division, the front office and it goes on and on. There's so many things in auto racing that you have to be able to do to really say that you've put a competitive car out there. I think that's the problem. There are so many things you have to do to have a winning car, then you have to be fortunate to have the right driver and right crew chief and assemble the people. It's a multifaceted business."