Joe Gibbs Racing conflict: To share or not to share in Sprint Cup finale

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Team owner Joe Gibbs said his championship-contending drivers — Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards — wouldn't be sharing information about their cars this weekend, but that was news to them.

"Did you know we weren't sharing?" Edwards asked Busch.

"No," Busch said.

"Yeah, me either," Edwards replied.

"Joe's not in our meetings," Busch said. "Don't listen to Joe."

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In fact, Busch said he'd been looking at Edwards' data all day and vice versa. The Joe Gibbs Racing teams are sharing with an open-notebook policy, as they've done all season.

"That's what we do, and I think we do that all the way until race time," Busch said.

Earlier Friday, Gibbs had told reporters at Homestead-Miami Speedway that Busch and Edwards will “both kind of be on their own here.”

“Both of them want this in the worst way and they’re going to compete,” Gibbs said. “They’re not sharing a lot of stuff. … We kind of felt like obviously they’re going to be individually going for it.”

That seemed like a big change from earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Edwards crew chief Dave Rogers said there would be unlimited information sharing among the four JGR drivers — just as there had been all year.

“We’re going to battle as hard as we can to win, but we're going to do it the same way we have all year,” Rogers said. “We're going to help each other. We're going to try to settle it on the racetrack, but the main goal is that the championship comes back to JGR.”

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And on Thursday, Busch also said he expected the teammates to act as they normally would. That includes a meeting with all four JGR drivers — Busch, Edwards, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth — about how their cars are handling.

“We believe there's still going to be the same discussions that we have after practice,” Busch said. “We'll still have our debrief after final practice and be able to give each of us the best opportunity possible to go ahead and be successful on Sunday.

“How we use those notes every week is how successful we are in the race, so it comes down to crew chief, it comes down to driver of being able to pick through what everyone says and using the best of those notes to their advantage.”

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But Edwards, speaking to reporters after Busch on Thursday, indicated he wasn’t so sure about the information sharing. Edwards initially said he assumed everything would remain the same, but then deferred to Gibbs.

“If we find out something in practice, do we share it back and forth?” Edwards said. “It depends on if he's faster or I'm faster. If he's faster, I'm going to definitely think we should share some things.

“No, I don't know. It's really up to Coach. It's probably up to Kyle and I, honestly. We ought to talk about that. We haven't discussed that yet.”

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