Toyota Keeps Joe Gibbs Racing in its NASCAR Portfolio

Toyota retains its flagship NASCAR team for undisclosed period of time.

byAmanda Vincent|
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Joe Gibbs Racing has extended its relationship with Toyota, team owner Joe Gibbs confirmed to RacinBoys.com on Saturday. The car owner, though, wouldn’t disclose the length of the extension.

“Quite a while,” Gibbs said.

Toyota has been a competing manufacturer in NASCAR’s top series since 2007, adding Joe Gibbs Racing to its roster of premier-series teams in 2008. JGR has been the flagship outfit of sorts for Toyota ever since.

JGR driver Kyle Busch won the first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship for Toyota in 2015. Martin Truex Jr. followed-up that championship with a second for Toyota last season, driving for Furniture Row Racing who has a technical alliance with the Gibbs-led squad.

“We had a chance to come over there and be first, and that wasn’t going to be the case any where else,” Gibbs said. “That’s been so good for us. Having the partnership with Toyota has been great.”

Toyota has been the manufacturer champion in NASCAR's premier series the last two seasons.

For 2018, Gibbs fields four Toyota entries in the Cup Series—the No. 11 driven by Denny Hamlin, the No. 18 for Busch, the No. 19 for Daniel Suarez, and the No. 20 for Erik Jones, last year’s Cup Series Rookie of the Year.

Busch is the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points leader, nine races into the 2018 season. Hamlin also is in the top-10 of the standings in sixth and Truex is seventh. Busch won his third-consecutive race Saturday when he took the checkered flag in the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway in Virginia. He also has seven consecutive top-three finishes, with his only two finishes outside the podium this year being a 25th in the season-opening Daytona 500 and a seventh-place showing the following weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Joe Gibbs Racing also fields three entries in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

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