Team owner Gibbs meets with squabbling drivers

JIM UTTER

The Charlotte Observer

Sunday, Jul. 15, 2007

JOLIET, Ill. -- Team owner Joe Gibbs made an unexpected stop over the weekend to Chicagoland Speedway to attempt to bring some resolution to a festering squabble between Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin.

Gibbs stopped off in the Chicago area Saturday while on a West Coast trip and held a nearly 20-minute closed-door meeting with Stewart and Hamlin, which forced both of the drivers to miss part of Saturday’s final Nextel Cup practice session.

“Obviously, the issue started at Daytona and the biggest thing for us is the longer they go on, the worse they get,” said team president, J.D. Gibbs. “It was more a family situation. We were going to sit down and talk about it behind closed doors and not say a whole lot about it.”

Hamlin and Stewart were running first and second, respectively, in last Saturday’s Pepsi 400 when Stewart hit Hamlin from behind exiting Turn 4 starting an accident that sent both cars to the garage for repairs.

During an interview on TV, Stewart blamed the incident on Hamlin and claimed the younger driver didn’t know how to be a teammate. Hamlin was much less confrontational. Both have been trading barbs in the media since last weekend.

“He didn’t tell anybody he was coming in. He just kind of showed up,” J.D. said of his father. “Until that morning, we had talked about it before, and he said, ‘We’ll do it now.’ I couldn’t come yesterday. So he just (did it). It was OK with me. I just work here.”

J.D. declined to get into specifics with what was said during the meeting, but was adamant the issue “had been put to bed.”

“For us, address it the right way. If you have an issue, let’s talk about it and when you go out, don’t talk about it in the media,” he said. “Talk about it behind go closed doors. If you do that, then you’ll be good to go.”

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