Ty Gibbs won his second race of the season on Sunday at Iowa Speedway, pushing him into second in the NASCAR Cup Series standings with just three races to go before the start of the Chase.
Key to Gibbs’s win was an aggressive pit strategy that saw the No. 54 team make three two-tire stops over the course of the race. After a slow pit in the opening stretch of the race, Gibbs needed to win back track position, and the team decided to roll the dice on two-tire stops.
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It paid off.
But while the strategy felt extremely aggressive for those of us watching from home, crew chief Tyler Allen explained that he felt pretty comfortable making the call after seeing how well the car stood up to long runs in practice ahead of the race.
“In practice, looking at the wears, it was very minimal,” told Inside the Race after the win.
“Even we had that caution come out in the middle of practice after 30 or 40 laps on tires, made no changes, and went out and went just as fast as we were running. So it was clear that rights were going to be an option all day. That was a little longer than I wanted to go on rights-rights in stage two, but at that point we needed some track position and the car speed was there. Ty did a really good job getting us back in position for the final stage.”
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Allen said that while he still feels the pressure when making the big call in the moment, having the experience and trust of his team behind him made it easier to go for the win.
Gibbs now stands in extremely strong position on the eve of the Chase. While his two wins lag behind Denny Hamlin (four wins) and Tyler Reddick (five wins), Gibbs has produced consistently high finishes, with 10 top-five performances on the season — only Hamlin has more.
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