Two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano has reached his breaking point with last season’s Rookie of the Year in Joe Gibbs Racing’s Ty Gibbs.
Last season, the duo got into it on the racetrack numerous times, culminating in Logano spinning Gibbs during last fall’s playoff race at Martinsville. Well, history repeated itself during The Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum, when Logano and Gibbs got into it again after the race was over-with.
Joining the crew over at SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Logano prefaced his feelings by detailing the relationship between Gibbs and himself, where he elaborated on a conversation the duo had after the Martinsville incident, where Logano thought he got his point across until Saturday night.
“He called me afterwards, which I respected that. We had a conversation, came to my place, and we talked for about 30 minutes. I thought, ‘Man, that was pretty cool. He was very humble. We had a good conversation about it. I thought I’ve been through a lot of this stuff before when I was like him, right? I can see a lot of myself in Ty. I get a lot of it,” Logano explained. “I thought, ‘Man, if I talked to Kevin (Harvick) that way or I talked to Tony (Stewart) in that way, gosh that would have been great, like to have had that.’ So, I was open … I’ve been through this before. Let me see if I can help the situation out. So we left and we shook hands and ‘OK, here is how we’re going to do it, we’re going to respect each other on the racetrack, we’re going to respect each other.
“And only for the first opportunity for us to race each other since that conversation to get completely used up on the restart. I get it, 10 laps to go in the Clash and we’re going to be aggressive with each other, but to completely use me up into the fence, not going to be OK with me. So, obviously, I’m mad about that. At that point, I wanted to make sure he knew that I was pretty upset about that and that’s not acceptable.”
Evidently, Gibbs’ attitude during The Clash and in their confrontation afterwards has Logano thinking there’s no hope for reconciliation, as he stated that Gibbs’ words have no value to him after he went back on everything they spoke about previously.
“So, obviously, I’m mad about that. At that point, I wanted to make sure he knew that I was pretty upset about that and that’s not acceptable,” Logano stated. ““Now, where do we go from here? I don’t know. I don’t know. We had a conversation, he said all the right things.
“His words don’t mean nothing to me anymore, so I’m not going to to talk to him. But I don’t really know the next to do. … I’m at a loss at this point.”
Alas, it’ll be fascinating to watch how this rivalry evolves in 2024, with Joey Logano an aggressive veteran and Ty Gibbs trying to make a name for himself. It’s obvious they won’t be friendly to each other on the racetrack, so perhaps a continued war is on the horizon over the course of the Cup Series campaign.