For most companies around the world, the scissor lift is just a piece of equipment used in the course of business. For the employees of Joe Gibbs Racing, the scissor lift indicates that it's time to take part in a time-honored tradition — the banner raising ceremony.
Videos by FanBuzz
These ceremonies are the opportunity for those on the competition side to deliver a message to everyone else in the company. It doesn't matter if they built the cars, booked the flights, paid an invoice, changed tires, or swept the floor. Every single person on that campus directly contributed to the win.
"You don't get to see the carpet walkers all the time on the second floor who are not touching the race car," Denny Hamlin told FanBuzz. "You have the competition side on the other side, and you got folks in the fabrication shop. You just don't see those folks that often.
"It's just an opportunity to see them face-to-face and thank them, otherwise the only other time we get to thank them is in victory lane or at the Christmas party at the end of the year. It's our only shot."
Photo credit: Alfred Wheeler/Joe Gibbs Racing
Every winning team in NASCAR has a specific way to celebrate. Some teams ring a bell and drink a beer. Others sit down for a company-wide meal. The list of examples is extensive. Yet, not many teams take part in ceremonies as regularly as those who work for two-time Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs.
"There's a lot of them," Chase Briscoe said while laughing. "Yeah, it's just crazy how many there are and how often they happen. I think this year we've won 14 or something races. Yeah, I mean, 14 out of 34 or whatever, that happens quite a bit.
"So, yeah, just glad that I was able to be a small part of those 14 going up, and, yeah, it's neat to have that camaraderie. And we did stuff like that at Stewart-Haas (Racing), we only did it twice in three or four years. So it's nice to be able to do that, it seems like, week in and week out."
The banner ceremony story
Joe Gibbs Racing has held a lot of banner ceremonies over the years. After all, this is a team that has celebrated 227 Cup Series wins.
This includes 13 points-paying races this season between Hamlin, Briscoe, and Christopher Bell. It also includes Bell's win in the All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
"Looking right out there (into the shop), I can see every one of them from right here, and across the shop are the championship banners," Adam Stevens, Bell's crew chief, said. "And I've had a hand in three of those, and I can't even tell you how many of the Cup wins as a race engineer and then as a crew chief.
"So it's inspiring to see that every day and to be a part of it and see the excitement from Coach and all the people in the shop. Anytime we win a race, I make my best effort to get around and shake everybody's hand and tell them good job, and I appreciate what they do. And it takes all of us, every single one of us, to be competitive."
The team also recently began holding banner ceremonies for the Xfinity Series program, which has 221 wins over 29 years. This forced Joe Gibbs Racing to do a little bit of catching up while raising several banners at one time, but now they are squared away and ready to celebrate more wins in 2026.
The team executives don't know exactly who originally came up with the idea for the banner ceremonies. They started decades ago as Joe Gibbs Racing built its foundation in NASCAR.
What team president Dave Alpern knows is that they held the ceremonies for a long time before putting them on hiatus for several years due to scheduling issues. These ceremonies ultimately returned about 15 years ago.
The late JJ Damato, who served as vice president of marketing services until his death in 2020, suggested that the team begin holding the ceremonies again. JGR listened, much to the delight of many employees.
"I think for everybody, in many ways, the banner ceremony is part of the payoff," Alpern told FanBuzz. "Like we get to compete. People go to work their whole career and they don't know if they're winning or losing, and every week we either win or we lose.
"We look up at a scoreboard and if you're fortunate enough to get to hang a banner — again, there's not a lot of occupations where you hang a banner on Monday morning — we beat someone on national TV this weekend and we're going to acknowledge it right now. How cool is that?"
The team has held these banner ceremonies the Monday after every win (mostly) without failure since Damato suggested that they return. The reason for this specific day is simple — the competition meetings take place on Monday, so all of the drivers and crew chiefs have to be on the campus.
Rarely will the team postpone these ceremonies, unless something completely disrupts the schedule.
"Denny's real special 60th win, we had to postpone because I think he might've stayed in Vegas after the win," Alpern said with a laugh. "Yeah, that might've been due to a late night. And it was so special to him, we wanted to wait."
Chris Gayle, Hamlin's crew chief, appreciated that the team postponed this specific ceremony. He did not particularly want to take the microphone and speak to the entire shop about this milestone moment in the veteran driver's career.
Sure, he and Hamlin had celebrated after five previous wins, but the win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was unique.
"I think Denny was late coming into it and for a minute I got asked to speak," Gayle said. "And I'm like, 'Well I'm not raising... I'm not hanging Denny's 60th flag. I don't feel like I deserve that accolade at all.' Like I was part of this one win but I don't feel like I should do that."
Photo credit: Alfred Wheeler/Joe Gibbs Racing
The banner ceremony effect
A quick look through the NASCAR stat sheets show that Joe Gibbs Racing has won a ton of races over 34 years. This is a perennial championship contender that has only one winless season, 1992 when it first began competing in the Cup Series.
It could be easy for those in the competition department to rest on their laurels. They could simply look at the hundreds of banners on the wall and just relax a bit knowing that they have contributed to championships and the careers of numerous Hall of Fame drivers.
This is not what they do. In fact, every time they look through their office windows or step out into the shop to look at the cars being built for the next race on the schedule, that competitive fire just burns a little hotter.
"I think if anything it just drives you more to win, which is what we want," said crew chief Jason Ratcliff, who has contributed to 15 Cup banners and 58 Xfinity banners.
"I think you can find a point — which we see that in every sport — that's the reason it's so difficult to do back-to-back because you get that reward, and then you forget all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it.
"So sometimes when you present that banner and you see that every day when you come to work, it can be a bit of a motivation and also a reminder of what it takes to get there."
That fire doesn't go away when these members of the competition department step away from the pit box. They still want the team to go out and dominate every race on the schedule while adding dozens of banners to the wall.
But they also gain some perspective as they walk through the garage area at Martinsville Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, and all of the other tracks on the NASCAR schedule.
"The reality is, when you look through that window that the fans get to look through, or you walk that shop floor the way we do, and you look at all the banners that are on the wall now at Joe Gibbs Racing, from a Cup Series perspective, let alone the Xfinity ones that are just down the street, it's easy to kind of get complacent and say, 'Oh, we just hung another banner,'" competition director Chris Gabehart told FanBuzz while looking around the garage area.
"But there's so many teams in here that would just love to hang one or two or 10, let alone however many are on the wall now, 14 for just this year alone."
Every person at Joe Gibbs Racing sees something different when they look at the banners lining the walls of the shop. Some see them as an inspiration. Others just remember the hard work associated with specific wins.
Alpern doesn't think about the competition aspect when he looks at the banners. He doesn't work on the cars, nor does he make the calls during the race. He views these banners through the lens of how they affected specific people.
"For me — cause I've been around for really all the wins — they mean more to me because of what they mean to the people," Alpern said. "Either our people, whether, 'Hey, that was that driver's first win, that was so special.' Or, 'Oh, I remember the CMO of that sponsor came to their first race and we won and they got a ring and they cried and it was awesome.'
"Or in some cases it's, 'Hey, my family came to that race and it was awesome that they were all there for that win.'
"So each win has that personal thing. And for me, it's more tied to the significance of whether it was a milestone for one of the crew members or the driver, or whether it was an experience for a sponsor."
