Ty Gibbs calls out 'squirrelly' metric used to determine starting lineup at Darlington

Ty Gibbs came up just short at Darlington, and thinks that he could have won the race if not for how his day began

Ty Gibbs got off to a strong start in the first race of the Chase on Saturday at Darlington, securing a second-place finish behind Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell.

But despite the solid finish, Gibbs actually dropped two spots in the Chase standings from fourth place to sixth due to scoring just one stage point over the first two stages.

After the race, Gibbs was asked where he thought he might have fallen short of the win, and he had an answer locked and loaded.

"I think it just goes back to where we started," Gibbs said. "They had a pretty squirrelly metric they went off of and we started 28th unfortunately. Ranked in the fourth seed. Hopefully we can fix that for next time."

Gibbs was referring to the starting lineup of the race, which left him to start in 28th place and battle his way through the field all night.

Critically, lightning strikes around Darlington meant that both practice and qualifying were canceled ahead of the race. With no qualifying on the track, the starting order was determined by the metric, which is a weighted average of a car's place in the owner standings (30%), and the entry's finish in the most recent race (70%).

Unfortunately for Gibbs, the most recent race was at Daytona, where the No. 54 finished 34th.

On one hand, Gibbs's frustration is extremely understandable. Having the preceding race be a factor in the starting order of the next race feels like a reasonable move in most cases, but finishing position at Daytona is just far more random than it is at other tracks, and oftentimes where you finish the race is not a great representation of how you drove that day.

On the other hand, the metric is the system that's in place for every race when qualifying cannot be contested, and NASCAR doesn't have control over which race happened the week before the Cup Series runs into bad weather. Sometimes the breaks are just the breaks.

It was a tough break for Gibbs, as starting higher in the field would have at the very least likely helped him score a few more stage points, and as he intimated, might have been enough for him to take the checkered flag in front of Bell.

Instead, Gibbs will have to try his luck again next week in Illinois. On the bright side, if there's bad weather during qualifying this time around, Gibbs's second-place finish will help him out greatly.

Watch: Bell: Darlington victory 'a long time coming'