Race car drivers LOVE to race…if it has four wheels and a steering wheel; they are ready to hit the track – no matter how the surface is made.

However, some team owners put restrictions on their drivers under the guise of preventing serious injury like Tony Stewart’s broken back from an ATV accident in the desert or Chase Elliott’s broken leg in a snow boarding incident.

One such team is Joe Gibbs Racing who does not allow his drivers to race outside of NASCAR events.

On November 18, JGR has announced that drivers can now request racing in other formats.

The change comes along with the signing of dirt track star Chase Briscoe to drive the number 19 car beginning next season to take over the car vacated when Martin Truex Jr retired from full time racing. 

JGR driver Christopher Bell is also a dirt track racing star.

With two of the four JGR drivers dirt track fanatics, Joe Gibbs grandson and driver of the 54 car has also expressed some interest in running on the dirt.

Gibbs got a taste of dirt track racing when NASCAR held a dirt track race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

JGR owner Joe Gibbs spoke on the change saying, “we sort of talked things over to come up with a process by which they can request to run certain races.  If they get approval from everyone they need on our competition side, then they are free to run the race. That includes dirt, but also potentially other forms of racing.”

A bit surprised by the decision, Christopher Bell welcomes the change.  A Chili Bowl veteran, Bell has won the iconic dirt race three times.  Bell’s former teammate Kyle Busch will make his Chili Bowl debut next year.  Bell said, “I was definitely caught off guard by the change of policy.  I was super shocked, but with Chase coming on board and Ty growing an interest in dirt racing, it’s nice we have the majority of our team aligned with it now.”

Speaking on driving dirt or other races outside of NASCAR, Chase Briscoe said, “I could tell it wasn’t a hard ‘no,’ but it wasn’t something at the time they were super thrilled about  It didn’t feel like the door was shut completely; there was definitely a crack. But I didn’t know in my first year getting there, I would still be able to go do stuff if I wanted to.”

While the rules have been eased to allow dirt track racing, Bell, Briscoe, and Gibbs have yet to make any requests to do so.