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Coy Gibbs, the younger son of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs, who was a manager on his father’s auto racing team, died at the age of 49.
Joe Gibbs Racing Approved Gibbs’ Sunday of Death, in which he said Coy Gibbs “died in his sleep last night”.
“The family appreciates all of the thoughts and prayers,” said Joe Gibbs Racing a statement on Twitter”and requests privacy at this time.”
A cause of death was not immediately announced.
Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl winner with Washington who later ran a top-tier NASCAR organization with the help of his two sons, has now lost them both. JD Gibbs also died in 2019 at the age of 49 after a long battle with a degenerative neurological disease.
“We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of Coy Gibbs,” said NASCAR Chairman and CEO Jim France said in an opinion. “On behalf of the France family and all of NASCAR, I offer my deepest condolences to Joe, Pat, Heather, the Gibbs family and everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing on the loss of a true friend and racer, Coy.”
Joe Gibbs Racing Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer Coy Gibbs was in the Phoenix area Saturday night to watch his 20-year-old son Ty Gibbs win the Xfinity Series title at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz won.
Ty Gibbs came under criticism after destroying team-mate Brandon Jones in a race last week that cost the latter a shot at the season’s title. Coy Gibbs said after Saturday’s race that his son made “a big mistake” last week but then “doubled up and did his job” in the Xfinity Series finale.
“It was fun to watch,” said Coy Gibbs at the time as he watched his son, one of his wife Heather’s four children, take the win.
Ty Gibbs was scheduled to drive a car for 23XI Racing, a team co-owned by Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan, in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series finale at Phoenix Raceway. He retired from that assignment after the death of his father and was replaced by Daniel Hemric, who finished 17th.
NASCAR held a minute’s silence in honor of Coy Gibbs Sunday before the Cup Series race. A member of the Joe Gibbs Racing Team, Christopher Bell, was among the four drivers with a chance to win the season’s title on Sunday; he turned 10
“You wake up this morning and you’re racing for a championship — you’re happy, you’re excited — and then your world falls apart,” Bell said after the race, which was won by Joey Logano, who also won the relay title.
“Whenever you get messages like that, it definitely puts into perspective that there’s more, outside of racing,” Bell added. “The entire Gibbs family is in all of our prayers and thinking of them.”
“Today we’re going to do what we don’t want to do,” Hamlin said said in a tweet ahead of the start of the Cup Series race: “But we will unite as a family and race for the name on our chests.”
Several current and former NASCAR drivers also shared messages of support for the Gibbs family, including Kyle Busch, who finished seventh in his last race for Joe Gibbs Racing.
“Words cannot describe this day,” says Busch tweeted. “Today should be hard enough, but now it’s even more heartbreaking. Broken heart.”
My heart and prayers are with the Gibbs family today.
— Dale Earnhardt Jr (@DaleJr) November 6, 2022
Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, who hired Joe Gibbs for a second term as coach of the franchise from 2004 to 2007, said Sunday that he and his wife Tanya were “devastated” by the news.
“Our hearts go out to Coach Gibbs and his wife Pat,” the Snyders said in one expression. “Coy was a part of our Washington football family, having served on our coaching staff from 2004-2006. Our deepest condolences from the entire Washington Commanders family to his wife, Heather, and their four children.”
After playing college football at Stanford as a linebacker, Coy Gibbs spent several years driving, including in NASCAR’s Xfinity Series and Truck Series. He then joined his father’s NFL team in Washington as an offensive quality control assistant before being named manager of Joe Gibbs Racing Motocross in 2007. When JD Gibbs, then-president of the parent company, began suffering from neurological problems in 2014, Coy Gibbs took on bigger responsibilities.
“Racing is a family and the relationships throughout the garage run so much deeper than the competition on the track,” said David Wilson, development president of Toyota Racing, whose company has been a partner with JGR for years, in a statement (via nascar. en). “Today we lost a dear part of our family. The loss of Coy Gibbs is devastating for everyone at Toyota and TRD. Our deepest condolences and prayers go out to Joe, Pat, Heather, Ty, Case, Jett and Elle and the entire Gibbs family and Joe Gibbs Racing.”