Many teams have come and gone through the history of professional motocross and supercross in AMA competition. Few have left the legacy of Joe Gibbs Racing MX, which lasted from 2008 through 2020. First, the Gibbs name and its legacy in the NFL and NASCAR led to massive hype when the team launched into the dirt bike world. Second, the team was the first of its scale based in North Carolina, which meant a lot of industry personalities and riders were headed to a completely new spot for the motocross world. And we mean a lot, because JGR employed a ton of riders through the year, always having fill-ins at the ready. Also, the team did have success at the highest level, winning Monster Energy Supercross and Lucas Oil Pro Motocross races on 450s with Josh Grant, James Stewart and Justin Barcia, taking second in the Supercross standings with Davi Millsaps, representing Team USA at the Motocross of Nations with Barcia, and much more.
Beyond that, though, the personality of this team set it apart. JGR was new to this sport but owner Coy Gibbs (Joe's son) hired some of the most well-known names in the sport to operate his program. These were popular, likeable people, and that made the JGR pit one of the favorite spots in the sport. That atmosphere, though, came from Coy. He was competitive, but he enjoyed what he did. That permeated through everything the team did, and so, it left a legacy.
From our own archives, enjoy these two Racer X magazine stories. First, from the October, 2007 issue, written by Andy Bowyer, when the team was in the start up phase.
The Transformer
Who is Coy Gibbs and how will he change the landscape of American motocross? We went to North Carolina—the heart of NASCAR country—to meet Coy, his father, and the entire Gibbs Racing Motocross Team.
By Andy Bowyer
In case you’ve been hiding under your seat cushion in the grandstands, you know a lot of people in the motocross industry are thinking about NASCAR these days. The greatest champions in the history of our sport—Ricky Carmichael and Jeremy McGrath—are working their way up through the stock car ranks with the help of some of that sport’s best-known drivers, and others are sure to follow. Fortunately, this motocross-and-NASCAR fusion goes both ways.
Gibbs Racing, one of the most respected teams in NASCAR (think Tony Stewart), is well into the process of building its own SX/MX team, with a state-of-the-art race shop and big rig, private practice and testing facilities—all the bells and whistles. The squad will race 450 Yamahas with factory parts, and the team manager is none other than Jeremy Albrecht, who wrenched both Jeff Emig and James Stewart to multiple championships in his long tenure with Team Kawasaki. The only noticeable difference between the Gibbs Racing team and, say, SoBe No Fear/Samsung Honda, is that this team will be based in North Carolina rather the motocross hub of Southern California. Why? Because that just might be where the sport is headed.
This new effort is headed by Coy Gibbs, son of NFL Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs, and could provide the momentum American motocross has been looking for to reach the next level. The potential for success is certainly there. With their NASCAR tie-in, Gibbs Racing will enjoy the opportunity to utilize more resources than any satellite organization in the history of the sport. They will enjoy full support from Yamaha and will also see unprecedented synergy with the dozens of engineers that meticulously break down every piece of Gibbs Racing’s armada of championship-winning stock cars.
While the Gibbs name is famous for its ties to the NFL and NASCAR, the entire family has deep motocross roots. Joe Gibbs raised his family near the infamous Carlsbad Raceway. He rode Maicos and CZs around the Southern California desert during the 1950s and ’60s, and pretty soon his two sons, Coy and J.D. were riding and racing motorcycles too. “The boys grew up with everything motorized,” says the three-time Super Bowl-winning coach of the Washington Redskins. “I’ve always had a deep love of all motorsports, drag racing and everything. J.D. raced motocross for a while, but he was pretty crash-happy; I have to say I wasn’t too sad to see him get off them. “Coy also rode, and then he went into coaching with me,” Coach Gibbs continues, “but after three years of that he informed me that he wanted to step out on his own. He’s always had that love of motocross and would like to take this new team and get it going.”
History has shown us that at the heart of every successful motocross team is a simple love of the sport. “We aren’t in this for the money. We want to compete and try to win,” says Coy Gibbs. “We are proud to be involved in a family-based sport, and this is something that we have been looking at for a long time.”
Family history suggests they will do more than just get it going. Joe Gibbs’ Nextel Cup effort began sixteen years ago with a modest squad of seventeen employees that quickly became a championship-winning powerhouse of more than 420 employees. They now field three full-time Nextel Cup cars—piloted by Tony Stewart, J.J. Yelley, and Denny Hamlin—two Busch Series entries, and a full Late Model development program.
Perhaps the most significant cog in this new motocross machine is team manager Jeremy Albrecht. “J-Bone” has a lifetime of industry experience. Before his long tenure with Kawasaki, he worked with several smaller teams, so he has the perspective required to succeed here. “I have a lot of fresh new ideas for the team,” says Albrecht, who is in the process of moving his family from California to Carolina. “The Gibbs guys are all really big fans, and they basically said, ‘You build the team and we’re behind you.’ “We have a three-year plan to get to the top of the sport, and I truly believe we’ll get there. I want this to be fun, and we’re going to have some fun young riders and an upstart team,” says Albrecht, fully aware that he’s been handed a golden opportunity to do something special. “It’s going to be fun.”
Coach Gibbs has three Nextel Cup championships to go with his three Super Bowl trophies, but he knows success in motocross won’t come overnight. “It took us nine years to win a NASCAR championship, but then I joke to my friends in football and remind them we won the Super Bowl in our second year,” he laughs. “We want to use these first two years to establish everything, then find out the best path to win a championship.”
Gibbs and his son both know that the first step to winning is to pattern yourself after existing winners. Fortunately, the moto team won’t have to look far: the Gibbs MX team is coming together in a building about 100 yards from the Gibbs Racing Busch car shop, which Albrecht and Coy Gibbs have been filling with all the elements a professional race shop needs. When asked if they would make use of one of the many NASCAR haulers sitting around, Coy replies with a proud smile, “No, we just ordered a brand-new one specifically for the motocross team.”
“We realized as we kind of looked at [the MX team], it’s got a lot of properties about it that the NASCAR program does, just a smaller version,” explains Coach Gibbs. “It’s about having good talent racing for you, finding good young guys—and we were all over that—as well as finding good sponsorship partners and the team. We branched out and made up our minds and are giving it a full effort. We have a lot of resources to put behind this program: we have trainers, riders we’re pulling in, and a good partner with Yamaha and Keith McCarty, who has been great to work with.”
Gibbs Racing’s new agreement with Yamaha is not only for motocross and supercross, but their road racing programs as well. Gibbs Racing will utilize its array of CNC mills, suspension resources, and engine dynos to duplicate and hopefully improve many of the parts on the motorcycles in Yamaha’s racing lineup. While comparing motorcycles to stock cars may seem difficult, consider that the Gibbs engineers make their own metal parts on-site and guarantee equal heat treating and hardness of the various gaskets, shims, and valves they produce—all the fruits of the resourceful Nextel Cup team. The same computerized CNC mills that carve out the team’s V8 engine heads and crankshafts can also produce YZ450F engine cases, triple clamps, brake calipers, and other hard parts; the same engine dynos that evaluate the Gibbs Racing Chevrolet power plants can also be calibrated to accommodate a factory YZ450F motor. In fact, Gibbs’ engineers can evaluate and manipulate almost every part on their motocross bikes that lie under the production rule.
As much as the team stands to benefit from a performance standpoint, the marketing possibilities have comparable potential. North Carolina-based David Evans, longtime agent for James Stewart, first came into contact with Gibbs Racing while feeling out somewhere-down-the-road stock car racing possibilities for the young champion. When planning began for the motocross team, Evans would have seemed an immediate go-to guy, but this was not the case. Coy Gibbs was skeptical of contacting Evans for advice and networking, as the agent had his hands full with Stewart. But after Evans and his rider parted ways last fall, the door was opened for the agent to focus on the team’s venture into motocross.
With their resources, their enthusiasm, and their winning pedigree, the Gibbs family is coming full-throttle into this endeavor. And it doesn’t take an insider to realize this team will have the potential to really shake up the SX/MX establishment. The starting gates will be a little more packed and a lot more competitive with the introduction of the Gibbs Racing Motocross team, possibly as soon as the Rockstar Energy U.S. Open in October. With the sport going through a transitional period and seeing some positive growth, this new team could be a sign of things to come while providing a spark that could light the fast track to a brighter future for everyone involved in American motocross.
The team and Evans have already begun making the most of Gibbs Racing’s existing Forbes 400-level race car sponsors. Evans has been putting together a marketing campaign that could make Gibbs MX one of the more well-funded teams in the sport and possibly provide a boost for the entire industry. While walking across the white-painted floor of the pristine 100-yard-long Cup shop, which is filled with dozens upon dozens of race cars, Evans points to one of Denny Hamlin’s #11 Fed Ex cars. “Imagine a FedEx partial pick-up station at all of the AMA supercross and AMA motocross races,” he offers. “If we can get FedEx together with the NPG and Live Nation on a deal like that, I think it would be something that the entire industry would benefit from. I mean, just look at Parts Unlimited, for example. Look at how much worldwide shipping they do. Getting involved in the motorcycle industry just makes good business sense for someof the biggest companies in the world.”
Marketing is important, but the longevity and prosperity of a professional race team depends first and foremost on results. As the team began to come together, they were looking at several different riders. And since they are choosing to begin their SX-racing endeavors in the premier 450 division, it will be no easy road to success. The team has had its feelers out for some time, having flown in Ryan Villopoto, Davi Millsaps, and more for talks. Most of the championship-caliber riders are locked into contracts for 2008, so Evans and Albrecht went scouting for competitive young talent with the ability to get into the main events and maybe put in some podium performances.
The first rider that formula led them to was the former Red Bull KTM team member Josh Hansen. Armed with lots of natural talent and a history of on- and off-the-track conflicts, not to mention a reputation as a slacker, Hansen must seem like an odd choice to some. But he has proven race-winning speed and plenty of raw potential. A move to the East Coast could be just what he needs. “We realize that we are going to be dealing with young guys,” Joe Gibbs says of the team‘s newly signed rider. “The fact that we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on somebody that young is a concern, and I know some companies go after a guy looking for a certain marketing look—like the energy-drink companies and such—and we know and understand that, but all we’re really looking at is what kind of person the kid is. You know, heck, we’ve had linebackers with mohawks, and that kind of stuff is fine with us. Hey, this is young America. This is where we are. “First off, he’s pretty sharp,” Gibbs continues. “Normally, you can do well with the sharp guys, but I think he needs some guidance. We’ve kind of talked to some of the guys that have spent some time around him, and they think this change of environment is what he needs. He’ll have good people around him to nurture him and bring him along, and we think that will be fun.”
All this sits well with Hansen, who is looking forward to making a big change in his still-young career. “I know I need to work on the way I carry myself both on and off the track,” he admits, “and those guys are such good, trustworthy guys that I feel like they really have my best interests at heart. I’ve learned a lot the past couple years, and even though I’ve been injured, I know I need to work on my fitness more. Coy has a trainer for me, and I’m moving out there [to North Carolina] to make it happen. I’m looking forward to moving out there, getting away from all the distractions [of California], and getting to work. This is my job, you know? I’m stoked to have the chance to ride a factory Yamaha 450, and I really think we’re going to surprise people.” Who will be the second rider? As of press time, Gibbs Racing was still in the market.
With their resources, their enthusiasm, and their winning pedigree, the Gibbs family is coming full-throttle into this endeavor. And it doesn’t take an insider to realize this team will have the potential to really shake up the SX/MX establishment. The starting gates will be a little more packed and a lot more competitive with the introduction of the Gibbs Racing Motocross team, possibly as soon as the Rockstar Energy U.S. Open in October. With the sport going through a transitional period and seeing some positive growth, this new team could be a sign of things to come while providing a spark that could light the fast track to a brighter future for everyone involved in American motocross.
Following a loss of support from Suzuki, the JGRMX team announced it would not return to the track for the 2021 season. Jason Weigandt penned this story for the February 2021 issue of the magazine.
Full Circle
Coy Gibbs’ JGRMX dream is over. Was it a success?
By Jason Weigandt
When a massively successful operation like Joe Gibbs Racing turned its attention to motocross, success seemed like a given. Joe Gibbs is the only person in both the pro football and NASCAR Halls of Fame. He won three Super Bowls as a coach, then turned his attention to racing. The ranks of rich, famous, smart, and powerful operations that tried to conquer automobile racing—and NASCAR in particular—is filled with failure, yet Gibbs created arguably the strongest NASCAR organization in the last decade, even while aligning with an upstart manufacturer to NASCAR in Toyota.
When the dirt bike team won the first supercross of its second year of existence—the prestigious season-opening Anaheim 1 with Josh Grant—Coach Gibbs drew immediate parallels to the NASCAR team, which won the prestigious season-opening Daytona 500 in its second year. If JGRMX continued to win races, it would change the way the game was played. Eastern-based. Private ownership. Team unity.
A dozen years later, it didn’t take. The team did not win as expected, so it didn’t revolutionize the game.
What is it about motorcycle racing that proved different?
Coy Gibbs, Joe’s son, is the real creator of the JGRMX squad. As he followed his father’s pathways, he found himself first playing football (on scholarship at Stanford) then later, after injuries, behind the wheel in the NASCAR truck series, and then as an assistant coach in the NFL. Coy found motocross a perfect mashup of racing and athleticism, plus the motocross team gave him something to call his own, since his brother JD had been tapped as president of the NASCAR effort when Dad went back to coach the NFL’s then-Washington Redskins in 2005.
Coy’s team had three unique philosophies. It would be based in North Carolina, outside of the standard California motocross hub; would leverage the knowledge and infrastructure of its NASCAR teams; and it would use a team concept: riders would share a team trainer and do all of the training, testing, and practicing under the watch of the team.
“We are different than most teams,” Coy Gibbs told Racer X for our July 2008 issue. “The rider is in about every day. It’s more like the stick-and-ball environment that I grew up in, where everyone is in one location together, and I think over the long haul it’ll prove to be a great model, because when you’re out there in a team environment, you know who is working and who’s not. There’s no hiding, because we see you every day, so to say you’re going to work hard and do a bunch of things is great, but I’m going to know if you’re doing everything.”
Today, the team training concept is commonplace, led by Aldon Baker’s alignment with the KTM group, which now includes a subset of Baker trainers (Mike Brown and Seth Rarick) who manage the young 250 riders. This group works primarily in Florida. Star Racing Yamaha has had considerable success letting one trainer, Gareth Swanepoel, manage most of its riders, and Swanepoel requires those riders to stay in California, near him.
There was a time when teams expected riders to put in the necessary work during the week on their own accord, without accountability or analysis. As the sport grew and riders could afford to build their own training facilities, usually in the Southeast, the trust game stretched further. How would a team actually know the rider is working, and how could they improve without analyzing one of the major elements of the process?
Today, the KTM and Husqvarna teams in California receive nonstop data streaming from Baker’s facility in Florida. Nothing is left to chance. This is the vision Coy Gibbs had over a dozen years ago, but being a visionary has its hurdles. Not only did some of the industry bristle at this notion back then, but, most importantly, so did the athletes. Today, riders join teams because they value the team training concepts of successful squads. Baker’s clients often use the word trust.
A generation ago, Gibbs had to fight for trust. Actually, it never truly came. The very first season was a washout when Josh Hansen took umbrage with the concept and left the team. Josh Grant’s incredible Anaheim 1 win the next year helped right that ship, as JG was an uber talent from California—sometimes questioned as a worker—who showed heart and discipline in his early days under the JGR banner. The team later connected with an under-heralded workhorse in Justin Brayton. With a 1-2 combination of flashy talent and a quiet worker, JGRMX began to chart its course.
Grant, Brayton, and JGR together had taken themselves to a new level. Eventually, both riders left for a shot at Team Honda. JGR still wanted to win at the highest level. The team approached Ryan Dungey and later signed James Stewart, easily the most hyped moment in the team’s history. Heading into 2012, Stewart was just a season removed from starting Monster Energy Supercross with the #1 plate. He knew much of the JGR staff, starting with team manager Jeremy Albrecht (his old mechanic at Kawasaki). Plus, Gibbs promised him some tests in a stock car, reviving the Stewart-to-NASCAR hype from his teenage years.
There was just one oddity: JGR was a Yamaha team. James had already struggled with the YZ450F in 2010 and 2011 while riding for L&M Racing.
With JGR’s NASCAR machining and engineering, they could promise to build any part (including a one-off gas tank/air box Stewart had requested). However, AMA racing is a different animal than car racing. This is production-based competition, and a motocross bike’s engineering intent comes from staff in Japan or Austria. Even factory teams operated directly by the American arms of a manufacturer can lose things in translation with Japan. Gibbs, a private team, was even further removed. In this discipline, decades of development data lie within the hard drives of engineers overseas, developed on tracks and from riders all over the world. This is much different than NASCAR, which operates only within its own context, on one-off machines built only for the races within its own championship schedule.
Yamaha did lend assistance, especially on the financial side. Beyond that, there are two sides to every story. JGR could say Yamaha would rather just win with its own team; Yamaha could say that JGR’s counterculture North Carolina NASCAR philosophy wasn’t best for success. Either way, it never felt like a perfect marriage.
Muddying the waters, Yamaha’s radical YZ450F concept, with the cylinder reversed compared to other bikes, was getting a bad rap at the highest levels. JGR’s resources, both financially and scientifically, led Stewart to try it again. That led to the unofficial end of Coy Gibbs’ team concept, because Stewart, with his own well-proven compound in Florida, had no reason to move to North Carolina. In its early days, JGR could offer a rider a free test track and trainer—a budget saver for a journeymen racer. Such trappings are meaningless with championship-proven riders already set with championship-proven tracks and trainers.
The Stewart/Gibbs tandem won the Oakland and Daytona Supercrosses in 2012, but crashes marred nearly all the other races, and the two parties split within just a few months. Stewart next showed up on a Suzuki and went 1-1 at Hangtown. Was it the Yamaha? The team?
The YZ450F still hasn’t completely shaken its bad rap in supercross, Justin Barcia being the latest to leave for 2021. Barcia, of course, had a run with JGR, reviving some of that old team spirit by buying a house near the team shop in North Carolina. They enjoyed a brief run in the second half of 2015, but the expected heights were not sustainable.
While the Yamaha 450’s struggles garnered the headlines, there was a larger issue at work beneath that. By the mid-2010s, every 450 race team utilized a bottom-up approach to success. Kawasaki was dominating Monster Energy Supercross with Ryan Villopoto, raised through its Team Green amateur and Pro Circuit 250 squads. Roger De Coster put his faith in a young Ryan Dungey, and Dungey stocked two De Coster teams, Suzuki and KTM, with championships. Honda’s 450 effort enjoyed an embarrassment of riches thanks to GEICO Honda’s amateur and 250 scouting. Where was the ship full of young Yamaha talent to stock JGR’s 450 roster?
Yamaha launched its radical-concept YZ450F in 2010, in the depths of the Great Recession. It skipped a generation of that engine design with the YZ250F, instead soldiering on with a carbureted 250 all the way until 2014. Ironically, the highly potent reversed-engine design does better in the horsepower-is-king 250 class. When the new-gen YZ250F finally launched in 2014, it instantly revolutionized the fortunes of Yamaha’s 250 team, Star Racing. Suddenly, the team was churning out nonstop hits, including Cooper Webb, a young talent already well-known to the Gibbs operation. A North Carolina native, Webb had JGR-built engines in his bikes as an amateur. He could finally provide JGR with a top draft pick, until he hit the 450s . . . and Yamaha revived its 450 factory team and gave him a huge offer to join.
Yamaha still offered support to the Gibbs operation for that 2017 season, but JGR felt jilted enough to switch to Suzuki and take Barcia with them. That didn’t work, either, as Barcia’s fortunes sunk so badly he was nearly out of career options by the end of the season. Ironically, his lifeline would come from the reborn Yamaha factory team. In his first race for Monster Energy Yamaha, Barcia nearly won Anaheim 1. He then won the race in 2019 and 2020. Barcia missed A1 completely for Gibbs with injuries in 2016 and 2017. With JGR, a percentage of the struggle was just bad luck and timing.
Weston Peick would become a key anchor in JGR’s Suzuki plan, back again to that journeyman workhorse model. But then he went down with injury at the Paris Supercross in late 2018 and never raced again. Joey Savatgy was the linchpin of the 2020 plan until he, too, suffered a devastating injury in an off-season race. To drive the point home, three JGR riders pulled out of the Fox Raceway National series finale in October with injuries in practice. It was the team’s last race.
By then, the high expectations of the Stewart and Barcia days were well in the rearview mirror. JGR kept trying. Suzuki offered the factory team by 2018 (filling a gap when yet another private team, RCH Suzuki, folded) and asked for a 250 effort. JGR hired more staff, and its relationship with Suzuki was smooth. However, those injuries really piled up, as did the age of the Suzuki bikes. The RM-Z450 was once the bike of choice in the 450 class. Today, the perception is that the Suzuki RM-Zs have not kept up in the technological arms race.
This is all only part of the story. Race teams are judged by the numbers we see—the results—but JGR needed funding to work as a private team. NASCAR sponsors never slid over to the motocross side, but JGRMX found its own supporters to keep the team solvent. A lot of those deals went away, the loss of title sponsor Autotrader.com at the end of 2018 hurting most. Then Suzuki attempted to cut its financial support. Eventually, JGR was squeezed on all sides—less money from sponsors and manufacturers, mediocre results on the track.
So there wasn’t a private-team revolution in motocross after all. The factory teams in California still rule. But there’s team-building within those operations like never before, many of them with Eastern outposts. The best teams are the ones that operate with the least friction between factions, the closest-knit dynamic between technicians, athletes, trainers, riders, and management. Coy Gibbs tried to create that environment by putting it all under one roof. His team may be gone, but his concept has arrived.