“Really the one thing Roger has ever told us is like, ‘I don’t care who wins, doesn’t matter to me which car wins as long as one of you wins,'” Ryan Blaney said about his team owner. But this sudden spotlight on teammate dynamics stems from recent Joe Gibbs Racing flare-ups, like Denny Hamlin tangling with Ty Gibbs. Such on-track friction isn’t uncommon in NASCAR, echoing past dust-ups at Richard Childress Racing between Kevin Harvick and Ty Dillon in 2013.

That Harvick-Dillon clash highlighted how egos can boil over. Similarly, Hendrick Motorsports dealt with tension in 2023 when Chase Elliott door-slammed Kyle Larson at Kansas. And the freshest example came at Kansas last week, where Hamlin’s last-lap move pushed 23XI employee Bubba Wallace into the wall. Yet amid these team headaches,

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