Interview With the Champs – Checkered Flag 500 BBQ
Comments Off on Interview With the Champs – Checkered Flag 500 BBQby Brian Walrath, MABA Board Member and Pitmaster for Brown Liquor BBQ
Mark and Sharon Gibbs of Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania have been tearing it up on the KCBS trail over the last calendar year with many big wins in the Mid-Atlantic. I recently caught up with Mark and was able to extract some great nuggets of information that I’m happy to share with you in this month’s “Interview With the Champs!”
Question:
Congrats on winning your 7th contest and getting that all important Automatic entry into “The Jack.” So, which contest was the clincher?
Mark Gibbs, Checkered Flag 500 BBQ:
Thanks! It is just an honor to be able to go to Lynchburg and represent our region this year. I have to be honest, it did not really hit me until the draw happened. I knew we were going, but when I saw our team name on the list with 7 other teams that have won 7 GCs I actually got a little choked up. I would have been thrilled with a draw in, but winning 7 to get in still has my head spinning! The clincher was Smoke on the Mountain in Galax, VA. Was lucky enough to get an entry from Luke Darnell that he won at the MABA banquet. They cooked in New York that weekend.
Q:
To what do you credit this great run your on this year?
MG CF500 BBQ:
Consistency. Looking at the great cooks that we have here in MABA, I asked myself what they are doing that I am not on a week to week basis. We always see new names near the top of the list, but there are always about 6 to 8 teams that you can count on being there at every contest. I have worked really hard this year at sticking to a timeline and doing the same processes. If something goes wrong, I can pinpoint it and try to fix it. My pit temp debacle in Laurel was one example. My pit was 150 degrees over my cooking temp for 3 hours. I thought my pork and brisket were torched, but I was able to salvage them and come out of there with a strong finish. I also have to say that having the new trailer and Deep South Smoker has made a ton of difference too. It is great having Sharon and our Lab, Sterling with me every week. Creature comforts help a lot when you can get rest and take a nice shower at a contest.
Q:
Tell us a little more about Checkered Pig 500…who makes up the team and how long have you been doing competition bbq?
MG CF500 BBQ:
Well, the Checkered Pig 500 would be a combination of myself and Tommy Houston. I would not mind that combination at all!
[Editor’s note…Ok, I can’t be the only one to have ever made this mistake…Mark rolled right with it like a pro, so I kept it in!]
The Checkered Flag 500 BBQ team consists of myself, my wife Sharon and our dog Sterling (the real boss of the team). We have been blessed to have my good friend John Layton of Red Brothers along with us on a bunch of occasions. This season we have also added two new associate team members, Kim Darnell of Old Virginia Smoke and Mark Kenney of Sauce This BBQ. They stepped up and helped me while Sharon was recovering from her ankle injury. I have to give a shout out to our other associate team members, Leigh Anne Terry of Old Virginia Smoke and David and Cindy Bryant of Covington Cork and Pork fame. The three of them stepped up when Sharon fell and had to go to the hospital at Buckhannon, WV and did all of my turn ins and clean-up. They got a 3rd Place overall finish for us that day and I will never forget their kindness and love! We have been competing since 2012 and we just completed our 77th contest in our career this past weekend in Bel Air, Maryland. We love being around our BBQ family and as long as it remains fun we are in for the long haul!
Q:
So, judging by the name, you’re a racing fan, right?
MG CF500 BBQ:
We both love to watch NASCAR races. The sport is evolving and we are not as attached to it as we once were but we still enjoy seeing a good race when we can.
Q:
Who’s your driver and what’s your favorite event?
MG CF500 BBQ:
My driver was Dale Jarrett for the longest time. He retired and I latched on to Kevin Harvick. I like the bad boy attitude and he is a winner. Sharon is a Carl Edwards fan and I don’t hold that against her. We have been to two Daytona 500’s. The carnival atmosphere there is really a lot of fun and you can really sense the speed of those racecars there.
Q:
This year you debuted a fine looking new rig…can you tell us more about it and how it’s made a difference?
MG CF500 BBQ:
The new trailer is a 28’ Southern Dimensions Trailer. It has made a huge difference in our contest life this year. It has AC, a bathroom, shower, satellite TV and a porch for the smoker. It is really all of the comforts of home in a box. Dan Hixon told me in 2012 that getting sleep is one of the most important things to build in to your competition timeline. It was really hard to do that with 2 EZ-UP canopies. We moved to a Class C RV for two seasons and that was nice, but it was not a competition setup. I was able to custom spec this unit out and it really does make a world of difference in our timeline. Sleep is my friend at a comp these days.
Q:
Now that you’re qualified for the Jack, what other special events do you have planned for the rest of the year?
MG CF500 BBQ:
We were planning on cutting back from the 22 contests we did last year. That did not happen! I have 29 on the schedule and we are in the middle of an 18 week out of 21 week run of competitions. Sharon is taking a couple of those weeks off under my orders because I know she will wear herself out trying to keep up with the crazy schedule I created for us. We will be doing our first American Royal in October, the Sam’s Regional in 2 weeks and hopefully the finals in Bentonville. There are just so many contests that we love to do that we could not knock them off of the schedule this year. We will be concluding with the Queing in Cumming contest in Cumming, Georgia the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Q:
Ok, I always ask our winning pitmasters this…what’s the one tip you have for those teams to help them break through and win their first GC or up their game in competition BBQ?
MG CF500 BBQ:
I think that the most important thing a new team or a team that is trying to get over the hump in competition BBQ should do is take a class. I was two contests into my competition life in 2012 and I did the 3 Eyz “experience” where I cooked the contest with them at Pork in the Park in Salisbury. I believe that they finished 19th in the contest (Dan said I was not bad luck they never did really well there), but I took away some valuable information that I still use today in my timeline.
Q:
Anything else to add before we sign off? (Feel free to plug your class here)
MG CF500 BBQ:
Thanks Brian, it has been a blast getting to chat with you about what has been going on with us this season. Still a long way to go too! The Checkered Flag 500 BBQ is hosting our first ever tell-all competition class September 2nd and 3rd. It is Labor Day weekend, but it was the only one that I had available until November. The response to the class has been great and we do have some room for a few more students. I am going to really give you every step that I use in my competition process and I am holding nothing back. It is going to be a fun time and we will be supplying dinner on Friday and breakfast on Saturday. There may also be a supply of adult beverages on hand as well!
Congratulations to Mark and Sharon and continued good luck the rest of the season!