J.D. Gibbs leading race team for now

Joe Gibbs is getting the Washington Redskins ready for Sunday's opener.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Building a NASCAR team was his father's dream, but J.D. Gibbs is now the man leading Joe Gibbs Racing into the future.
While the elder Gibbs is preparing the Washington Redskins for Sunday's opener at home against Tampa Bay -- his first game as an NFL coach in 12 years -- J.D. is overseeing preparations by the race team for Saturday night's crucial race at Richmond.
Tony Stewart already has locked up a spot in NASCAR's new 10-race championship playoff, but Bobby Labonte needs to make up two places to get into the top 10.
The race team has hardly missed a beat since J.D.'s dad made the surprising decision to return to the sport where he already has three Super Bowl titles and a niche in the Hall of Fame.
"Obviously, there was a lot of concern when he did leave, even though he wasn't doing a lot of the day-to-day operations," said J.D., who already was the team's president. "What he did a really good job at was keeping in contact with the sponsors."
Takes over everything
Now, keeping the sponsors happy -- and just about everything else -- is the 35-year-old J.D.'s responsibility.
That is something of a surprise to the younger Gibbs, who simply followed his father into the sport when Joe decided to retire from coaching and started organizing his NASCAR team in 1991.
"My brother and I grew up with stick and ball sports and went to some races," J.D. said. "When we started the team, I figured I'd do it for a couple of years and then I'd go coach. We had 15 employees and one car when we started."
Now, his father and younger brother Coy have gone back to coaching and J.D. is running the racing business, which has grown to more than 200 people and will add a third Nextel Cup team in 2005.
"We just happened to get in right when the sport was taking off and TV was really starting to really appreciate it, and the fan base really started to grow," he said.
While his father was actively involved with JGR, the team won 40 races and two Cup championships -- Labonte in 2000 and Stewart in 2002. J.D. chalks up much of that success to his father's organizational skills -- the same talent that brought Joe so much success in football.
"I think it was kind of neat to watch the way my dad handled issues," J.D. said. "He was just a good leader, putting teams together. That's all it is, just like football. Most of the guys have all the equipment and the cars. It's the people and how you put them together that's the biggest thing. You want to make sure that people want to come to work. That's his philosophy."
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