Joe Gibbs Racing Hires NASCAR Spotter Who Was Fired Over Comments Bashing Mexico City

Wasn’t unemployed for long…and he got a promotion out of it.

NASCAR Cup Series spotter Tab Boyd has landed a new job, just a week after being fired for comments he made on social media criticizing Mexico City the weekend before.

It all started when NASCAR was in Mexico for their first international Cup Series race since 1958. Everything seemed to go fairly smoothly, but Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s spotter Tab Boyd took to social media to voice his frustration after apparently getting hustled on the street outside of his hotel:

“I’m ready to go home, screw this place, people can talk it up all they want… can’t even walk out the front door of the hotel without getting hustled and money snatched… in less than 5 minutes. Good area my a**.”

And last week in Pocono, it was confirmed that Boyd had been fired by Hyak Motorsports after the comments, and replaced by Clayton Hughes, a longtime spotter in the Cup Series who was worked with drivers like Martin Truex Jr. during his time at Joe Gibbs Racing and Michael McDowell at Front Row Motorsports.

Now, generally spotting jobs are hard to come by mid-season. Teams set their rosters long before the Daytona 500, and unless someone quits or gets fired, there aren’t many teams in need of a spotter until the next offseason.

But luckily for Tab Boyd, that’s exactly what happened.

A few weeks ago, longtime spotter Stevie Reeves shocked the garage when he announced that he would be stepping down as spotter for Christopher Bell, who at the time was leading the points in his #20 car for Joe Gibbs Racing.

The past few weeks, Matt Philpott has served as spotter for Bell, but Philpott is a rookie spotter who volunteered to step in during the team’s time of need when nobody else was available to fill the important position for the team.

You probably know where this is going, right?

Well according to this week’s rosters for the NASCAR Cup Series race in Atlanta, Boyd will now serve as the spotter for Christopher Bell in the #20 car for Joe Gibbs racing…which is ironically the same team that Hughes, his replacement after getting fired from the #47 car, used to work for.

It’s not really surprising to see Boyd on the roof for Christopher Bell, a team that’s competing for a championship and needs a veteran spotter to replace Reeves. The consensus seemed to be that Boyd’s tweet wasn’t exactly a fireable offense, especially after NASCAR Cup Series driver Carson Hocevar was only fined $50,000 for calling Mexico City a “sh-thole” during the same weekend.

Veteran NASCAR reporter Jeff Gluck set off a firestorm on Twitter when he gave his opinion on the matter, calling Boyd’s firing unfair:

“Tab Boyd’s post was not a fireable offense IMO. I get the sensitivity around criticizing the host city for NASCAR’s big event and it probably wasn’t wise, but to lose your job for it? Is it because it went viral? He said he had a bad experience and didn’t like the city.”

And most people seemed to agree, although you of course had people who wanted to somehow claim that his tweet was racist or justify his firing for expressing his experience in Mexico.

It seems that he wasn’t out of a job for long though, and now he’s not only got a new job but also a real shot at winning the Cup Series championship with his new team.

A week’s vacation and a promotion? Wonder how he feels about that trip to Mexico City now.The post Joe Gibbs Racing Hires NASCAR Spotter Who Was Fired Over Comments Bashing Mexico City first appeared on Whiskey Riff.