By Nikki Viola
There’s nothing like a father-son relationship.
For Darrell Garbes and his son Jiro Garbes, their bond has firmed up even more because of their common passion for cars and anything fast. The Garbeses wrote the most interesting story in the Toyota Gazoo Racing Vios Cup 2021 when they raced together under the banner of JBT Racing/Toyota San Fernando and Jiro even emerged as the Promotional Class winner despite being a newbie.
Darrell Garbes is Chief Executive Officer and founder of mobile phone shop The Inbox Store and while Jiro is executive director of Null Creative Studios.
The elder Garbes started out as a Vios Cup contender back in 2015 and Jiro would always tag along in his races because of the younger Garbes’ fascination with go-karts. At a very young age, Jiro was already interested in circuit racing but wasn’t able to really push through with it because of studies.
But despite Jiro’s busy schedule in school, he makes it a point to watch his dad’s races for support. Fast forward to 2021, someone sold Darrell a Vios car, which gave Jiro an opportunity to finally join this year’s race. Darrell got the car for Jiro and the latter used it as a practice car for him to learn driving in a manual setting.
And the rest as they say, is history.
For someone who only had a week of practice before the race, Jiro never really thought that he’d be able to win his first foray in racing, bagging overall plum in the promotional class that attracted the most number of entries at 25. Sharing not just driving techniques but the joys of competing together, we can only expect that we’ll be seeing more of the father and son on the racetrack.
