Kevin Harvick: A JGR problem, continued issues for Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe

It’s been an up-and-down year for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), which has seen some enormous highs courtesy of Christopher Bell and some dismal lows. It’s been a roller-coaster.

Outside of Bell, success for JGR has been hard to come by. Even Denny Hamlin, the normally reliable veteran, hasn’t quite been in sync so far.

So what is to be made of JGR’s early season struggles, particularly for Ty Gibbs and Chase Briscoe? Kevin Harvick weighed in on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast.

“I think that this is the first weekend I mean all the Gibbs cars were not as fast as they needed to be,” Harvick said, coming off Las Vegas. “At one point three of the last five cars were the 54, 11 and the 19. Now 19 had a wheel fly off. 11, he had the speeding penalty. But he never really passed a car. So they definitely had some issues.”

Again, Bell has been downright dominant. Outside of that, JGR is looking for more.

Harvick further broke down the issues for Gibbs and Briscoe, who are struggling the most. And that’s even after Briscoe escaped a major penalty from NASCAR stemming from a spoiler modification at Daytona.

“There’s so much pressure on these guys to go out and win, and Briscoe’s, he’s kind of in that same boat now,” Harvick said. “They got out of the penalty, and I think that was obviously fair. But being able to get some consistency is how you get back on track and that’s where both of those teams need to be.”

On Gibbs, Harvick was short but sweet. It’s an easy breakdown for JGR.

“I think that the 19 has been super hit or miss with everything that they’ve had going on and working through,” Harvick said. “I thought that they, with Daytona, and I thought at The Clash, it’s just not firing. “

So how do Briscoe and Gibbs get back on track? Step by step, Harvick said. JGR just needs to focus on clean races. Self-inflicted mistakes have been killer.

“I think the biggest thing in those scenarios is let’s just have a day, wherever we finish, where we don’t screw anything up,” Harvick said. “If we’re going to run 25th, let’s just run 25th all day and have good pit stops, have good restarts, do all those things that it takes to complete the day. Then let’s come on home and talk about what we need to do next week.

“And let’s go next week and wherever we run, wherever we unload, let’s get down pit road correctly, let’s get all the tires tight, and let’s not make any mistakes all day and come on back home and see if we can do that two or three times in a row. Back to the basics.”