_{*Quick Summary: The author gives insight into the beginning of Joe Gibbs Racing starting from the remains of the #17 Tide race team.*}

Seeing Coach Joe Gibbs have tremendous success in racing is no surprise. When he came into the business, it was clear that was his intention. What many may not know is how his team started in 1992 with the remnants of Darrell Waltrip’s #17 Tide team from 1990.

Some backstory – In 1987, Darrell and Waddell Wilson were paired together at Hendrick Motorsports to start what was dubbed, “The Dream Team”. It was anything but that, and in the interim, changes occurred that left Darrell in a much better position to chart his own destiny. He decided he wanted to own his own race team. My understanding at the time was Darrell wanted to buy all the cars and equipment he was currently racing for Hendrick, but things didn’t work out, which led to Hendrick Motorsports taking back everything that belonged to them in Darrell’s shop. I was part of that repossession. We loaded everything, and I do mean everything. Darrell had purchased a few cars as I remember, but everything else was to be taken back to HMS. We were given our directions by the CFO and he made no bones about his goal – take everything. We were even directed to take spare light bulbs, and spare rolls of toilet paper – and we did. I was sent to remove that stuff, and I caught a lot of flak from the guys still working in the shop for doing it. I don’t blame them. Darrell would later briefly mention the toilet paper incident to the media. It felt horrible to do that to those guys as they stood there watching us load up everything they were working on and carry it away. These were my friends, and I felt like we were all on the wrong end of the deal. Some of the guys got a little animated, but we diffused the situation by simply reminding them we were only doing what we were told. Regardless, it felt very cold and harsh, but such is the nature of business some times.

We took everything a mile or two down the road to a warehouse at Hendrick Motorsports. It was where Papa Joe Hendrick kept his car collection and the team’s showcars, and where I spent a lot of my time doing small repairs, pumping up tires, fixing leaks, moving cars around, and other tasks when I wasn’t on the road. We moved most of Pop’s stuff to one side or out of the building altogether, and set up the remnants of a whole race team in the rest of it. The idea was to do inventory, charge DW for what was missing, then auction off the rest. That ended up being a fairly long process, eventually sped up by the fact Hendrick needed the warehouse to base a new race team to be driven by some kid named Jeff Gordon. Yes, Jeff’s first shop in the NASCAR Cup Series used to house showcars, old cars, and a bunch of nuts/bolts/parts from Darrell Waltrip’s old Tide team.

Around the middle of 1991, I left HMS for a job I would end up hating terribly. So much so, that I would return to Hendrick, almost daily, for the next 2-1/2 years so I didn’t lose touch. I’d either go to lunch there, or hang out in the evenings, or both. The auction happened and Joe Gibbs bought some of the cars and equipment to start his new race team. Because he didn’t have a fully running facility yet, my former coworkers helped to prep JGR’s very first car for the photo shoots and press announcement. One of DW’s old Tide cars, painted in Gibbs’ new Interstate colors, under the direction of Jimmy Makar, and a couple of other Gibbs employees. I was hanging out for much of that process, and even helped decal the car. The car in the “hero card” pictured here is that same car, including some of my decal handiwork.

It was a humble start for sure, but Coach Gibbs has since certainly made the best of things, and excelled beyond what anyone could’ve guessed at the time.