Joe Gibbs Racing Team I

Why the #18? - There isn’t a definitive answer as to why Gibbs selected the number 18 for its flagship car when the team first started. 18 may have been selected as it did acquire some assets from the failed Newman Hendrick Racing enterprise and Hendrick Motorsports did supply the engines originally for the team until 1995. Another theory is that the team wanted a “quarterback number” for its team and 18 was a number that quarterbacks have used, its the closest number that was available to 17 which was Doug Williams’ number for Washington when Gibbs coached the team. Another theory was just simply that it was the first number available that was not used by a NASCAR team at that time. As for now, we don’t know the answer why 18 was selected.

Why the #54? - The number 54 is a unique number in NASCAR, the number had not ran since 2003 with Todd Bodine at BelCar Racing and the number had not won a Cup race since Lennie Pond did at Talladega in 1978 with Harry Rainier’s team. The number was likely chosen to give Ty Gibbs a separate legacy from the number 18 which had a massive one from Kyle Busch, Bobby Labonte, and Dale Jarrett. As for why the number 54, that is because of the Busch Brothers, Gibbs ran the 54 after Kyle Busch Motorsports abandoned the Nationwide Series in 2013 and Monster Energy wanted to stay with the Busch Brothers. Originally the team chose 54 as a compromise between 51, Kyle Busch’s number in the Truck Series and the number 4, Kurt and Kyle’s number that they drove at the Las Vegas Bullring where both Kurt and Kyle started their careers. The number carried over to Gibbs and ran for years in the Xfinity series, it was brought back in 2021 when Ty Gibbs made his debut at the Daytona Road Course where he won in his debut.