Sprint Cup team owner Joe Gibbs has admitted that he's not altogether happy at the prospect of competing against Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Nationwide Series.
One of the more surprising developments during the close-season was the announcement that Joe Gibbs Racing had allowed their star Cup driver Kyle Busch to drop out of driving for the organisation's Nationwide Series operation in 2012.
Instead, Busch has been allowed to concentrate his expected 13-15 Nationwide outings into driving the #54 Kyle Busch Motorsports car, with Kyle's brother Kurt taking the car for the remainder of the 33-race season in 2012.
That puts Joe Gibbs Racing and Kyle Busch Motorsports into direct competition on the track for the first time - and Joe Gibbs isn't wild about the idea.
"I am not going to enjoy racing against him, I can tell you that," Gibbs admitted when speaking to the media at Daytona. "I probably would have voted no on that one. I probably would have been overruled, but I probably would have voted no."
Gibbs revealed that the agreement had been worked out between Busch and Gibbs' son, JGR team president JD Gibbs, without his involvement.
"He and JD got together, and the next thing I knew, I was like: 'What?'" he admitted. "Obviously he and JD got together and decided: hey, this is something that they could do.
"Listen, once all that was decided, I was all for it," Gibbs went on to insist, adding that he understood Kyle's motives as a team owner that were behind the move. "I hope he can keep all his people. That was one of the concerns ... He's got a number of people over there and he didn't want to see them in trouble."
Meanwhile, JD Gibbs admitted that it's at times like this that his father sometimes still feels the need to point out who is really in charge at JGR.
"He'll still take me outside once in a while and say, 'Whose name is on that sign? What does it say?' And I'll have to say, 'Joe Gibbs Racing,'" said JD. "And he'll be like, 'Just checking.'"
