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Friday, July 14
Motor Coach

By Ryan McGee
ESPN The Magazine

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- With 20 laps remaining, the next-to-last event of the 1999 Winston Cup season is boiling down to a two-horse race. Problem is, both horses eat from the same trough. Tony Stewart, who entered the pits in first place, rumbles from his stop, bringing his orange Pontiac up through the gearbox. As he reaches pit road's long backstretch, he looks at the track to his right and spies traffic in the form of teammate Bobby Labonte rolling off of Turn 2 at full speed. A drag race ensues, as the patch of grass that separates pit road from the track tapers into an arrow pointing deep into Turn 3.

Joe Gibbs, who owns both cars, watches uneasily from a TV booth about 300 feet above the action. Normally, he could control the situation from the pits with a push of a button, radioing both drivers to take it easy. But behind the mike for NBC's first NASCAR telecast, all he can do is try not to swear on air.


	Gibbs has created the model for multi-car team success.

As the backstretch gradually banks into Turn 3, Labonte lifts his foot from the throttle at the exact spot where he has done so all day. Stewart, however, noses his Grand Prix just a little deeper into the corner . . . and into the side of Labonte's car. On the TV monitor, the broadside bump looks like nothing, a little rub. Gibbs knows better. At 150 mph, there are no love taps.

Labonte slides out of the racing groove, losing control of his car . . . and his tongue. The outwardly quiet Texan lets loose a string of expletives and, as he slows to regain control, Stewart streaks away for the win. In the booth, Gibbs is on his feet. "That was scary," Gibbs exhales roughly, then says again, almost whispering into the microphone, "That was scary."

When Joe Gibbs arrived on NASCAR's pit road in 1992, he was respected for the three Super Bowl rings he had won as coach of the Washington Redskins, but he was regarded as a novelty act. Sure, he could bring some PR to the sport with a win or two someday, but he'd never keep up with established owners like Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Robert Yates.

Times have changed. Folks still call Gibbs "Coach," but, with Labonte and Stewart, he's now one of racing's best owners. Gibbs may be the last of a dying breed -- the guy who shows up with an average car, average driver and average budget, but works his tail off to become a contender. So forgive Coach his anxiety. The Winston Cup is his Super Bowl now, and every race counts.

Three months after Homestead, Gibbs can nervously laugh about the tense moment. "My heart went out of my throat," he says. "I've got one guy trying to finish second in the points and another trying to finish fourth. And they could have taken out both cars. That could have been a $500,000 mistake."

As he reflects on Homestead, Gibbs' eyes seem to sharpen a bit. It is the same intense look that Redskins fans loved and have no doubt missed. It is the same focus that spawned those furious sideline note-taking sessions at the end of each first half. For a brief moment, Gibbs is coaching again.

"As soon as Tony saw me, he said, 'The crew got me out of the pits first, I didn't want to come back out second,'" Gibbs says. "Tony's thought process wasn't, 'I've got to get Bobby Labonte.' It was, 'I'm going to lead this thing,' and he dove in there when he probably shouldn't have. Hopefully, we learned, and if they find themselves in that situation again, they'll give and take a little more."

Then, like a coach assessing his players, Gibbs says, "They both have a great passion for racing. Bobby is a fiery guy, Tony is very excitable. Both of them could win the championship, and it will be interesting to watch. But I do think they realize that their bread is buttered from helping each other."

After last season, Labonte and Stewart have a lot of bread to butter. In Gibbs' first year as a two-car owner, they won more than $8 million. Labonte and Stewart finished second and fourth, respectively, in the Cup standings and grabbed eight wins (Labonte five, Stewart three). As for Gibbs, last season's success went a long way to dispel a notion that still lingers eight years after he left the NFL. Gibbs, 59, is not just a retired coach with a pastime.

Raising his voice and pointing, as he always does when the subject comes up, Gibbs says, "This is not a hobby. If someone is getting into this as a hobby, then they are making a big mistake. No matter how much money you have, racing will outspend it. A lot of people's careers are at stake on this team. Crew chiefs, engine builders, fabricators . . . I take that very seriously."

Back in 1991, with Gibbs seriously considering retirement from the NFL, he began asking about how to start a racing career. Winston Cup racing is a small community, and before long, car owner Rick Hendrick heard about Gibbs' curiosity. A huge Redskins fan, Hendrick called the coach and offered the services of his righthand man, a guy named -- no kidding -- Jimmy Johnson.

"The perception might have been that Joe was getting into racing as a hobby," says Johnson, the former vice president of Hendrick Motorsports. "But he was looking for something to satisfy that hunger. I tried to tell him how hard it would be, tried to talk him out of it. He just said, 'I want to hear all about that bad stuff, but we're going to do it anyway.' He's in this to win."

By the following February, Johnson had Gibbs set up in a Chevrolet Lumina powered by engines leased from Hendrick. Few people gave Gibbs much of a chance, especially after he chose a lightly regarded driver named Dale Jarrett to pilot the ride. But one year later, they won the Daytona 500. Gibbs still smiles at the thought: "That was like an expansion team winning the Super Bowl in its second season."

"Joe has brought a very different perspective to this business," says Jarrett, who now races for Robert Yates. "He knows how to get all the talent possible out of each individual who's working with him." As a coach, Gibbs always saw Pro Bowl ability where others did not (see Schroeder, Jay). Similarly, Jarrett and, later, Labonte were considered journeymen when Gibbs brought them on board. In 1999, those two drivers finished 1-2 in points.

For Gibbs, every experience is an opportunity to learn. "Making adjustments" isn't just an old coaching cliché it's the key to Gibbs' nearly 30 years of success in pro sports. He may be devoutly Christian, but his theories on winning are purely evolutionist. "The NFL changed about 30 percent a year," Gibbs says. "I'd say that auto racing is pretty close. That means if you sit still for a year, you fall behind. There is a constant movement between rules changes, technology, TV contracts -- and it's always going to be there. If you can't han-dle that, then you're going to have a hard time."

In Washington, Gibbs handled change masterfully. In 1981, he took over a franchise that had been stuck in reverse for the better part of a decade and led it to the Super Bowl in two years. In 12 seasons, he won 140 games, and each of his three titles came with a different quarterback. Along the way, he transformed himself from a pass-happy offensive genius to a ground-grinder, then back again. His approach at the racetrack has been no different.

In 1996, he stopped leasing motors from Hendrick -- whose engine shop is the best in NASCAR -- and built his own. A year later, he ditched Chevrolet for the lovable loser of manufacturers, Pontiac. Both steps were risky, but they ensured Gibbs would not get the hand-me-downs of teams further up the food chain. "I'm sure it looked daring," he says. "But we knew we could be Pontiac's top team. We were never going to be higher than third at Chevrolet."

In late 1997, tired of weekly beatings by the big, multi-car conglomerates, Gibbs decided to form a second team. He soon targeted open-wheel hotshot Tony Stewart as the pilot for the new ride. "It reminded me so much of the football recruiting life," says Gibbs. "I was literally chasing Tony all over, flying cross-country, making late-night phone calls. But eventually it paid off."

Like Powerball. The cars of Joe Gibbs Racing won the last three races of the 1999 season. Twice last year, Gibbs' drivers finished a race 1-2; the last time that had happened for Pontiac was 1993. Not surprisingly, Labonte and Stewart top nearly everyone's list of favorites for the 2000 Winston Cup.

But now Gibbs is faced with a new challenge. NASCAR history says that if two cars compete for a championship out of one garage, they will not get along. Staring at a 35-week season, the coach wants to make sure that incidents like Homestead are isolated ones. So he has created a latter-day Hogs atmosphere at Joe Gibbs Racing.

"Our approach is different than most multi-car teams," says Gibbs. "I have 140 people working for me in the race shop, and both teams are under the same roof. Tony's cars sit side-by-side with Bobby's in the shop. The same guys build the same chassis for both drivers. The same engines go in both cars. When one car wins, everyone shares in the bonus money.

"Tony and Bobby get along very well, and so do the crew chiefs. There is a constant exchange of information. Until, of course, they're racing each other. And after Homestead, it ought to be pretty obvious to everyone now that with two cars up front, we don't have any deals. Whoever can win can win."

Aside from providing whatever equipment and financing his teams need, Gibbs gives them something much more important -- space. Just like the late Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, Gibbs has adopted a hands-off, "S.O.B. when I need to be" approach. "He's the perfect owner," says Jimmy Makar, Labonte's crew chief and the manager for both race teams. "All of these owners have a lot of money invested, and a lot of them get real jumpy and go helter-skelter trying to fix things or buy stuff or make some drastic change when stuff goes wrong. He's been very patient and lets us work through our problems. He has found his niche and understands what he can do to make these cars go faster."

The similarities between coaching an NFL team and owning a NASCAR outfit go only so far. Says Gibbs, "My job is different here than it was in football. My strengths are attracting sponsorship, keeping the team happy, hiring good people and paying bills. What I did as coach, that's the job of the crew chiefs."

Now the coach's playing field is in the Fortune 500 executive suites, wooing potential sponsors and convincing them that their millions will be well spent once they hand it over to his race teams. "He can't be beat in the boardroom," says Johnson. "There isn't a man in the world who doesn't like football. And Joe would get to telling those stories, and everyone's laughing, and next thing you know, they're jumping on board." Originally, Gibbs had to rely solely on his football rep to bowl 'em over. But now his track record in NASCAR practically does the selling for him. Just ask the suits at Interstate Batteries, The Home Depot and Coca-Cola who have ponied up the bulk of the estimated $20 million it takes for one man to put two cars at the front of the pack.

Gibbs' race weekends are frantic. He flies in by private jet before dawn on race day to canvass the sponsor hospitality tents that spring up like a corporate circus. Gibbs hits as many as eight. Just before his gentlemen start their engines, Gibbs hustles onto the grid to wish them luck. From green flag to checkered, he paces the pavement between his two pit stalls, constantly monitoring both teams on the radio. Only an emergency or a victory will warrant interrupting the conversations between driver and crew. For the most part, he just stays out of the way. "Those guys grew up racing," he says. "They're the ones that need to make decisions about chassis adjustments and pit strategies. Not me."

It's a whole new ball game, really, with different worries and responsibilities. Has it been worth it? Just look at the broad smile on Gibbs' face at the Daytona 500 on Feb. 20. Better still, look behind his trademark glasses, at the eyes that have seen championship contenders before. Now he's looking at two.


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