Denny Hamlin is always considered a favorite at Martinsville Speedway, having failed to finish only three races in 41 starts while recording six victories, but Chase Briscoe says having a teammate who’s enjoyed success at a particular track isn’t necessarily as valuable as in previous decades.
“One thing about the Cup Series now is with all the data that we have, I can kind of go see any driver at any race track that they’re really good at and have a pretty good understanding of kind of how they get around there,” Briscoe said. “I think in today’s world of Cup racing it doesn’t matter as much now who’s your teammate. Even when I was at SHR (Stewart-Haas Racing) I could see how Denny Hamlin drove the race track. I could see his throttle, his steering, all those things.”
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Denny Hamlin (#11) and Chase Briscoe duke it out at Iowa in August.
Briscoe admitted that one must guess at steering and brake pedal differences for a non-teammate. However, he notes that competition meetings are beneficial because they allow him to obtain a better understanding of what his Toyota needs at tracks where Hamlin, Christopher Bell, and Ty Gibbs are quite good.
“I think that’s the biggest advantage,” Briscoe said about teammates.
Of course, Briscoe noted there also were disadvantages because “you try to mold everything based off them and their success, and you know naturally you do drive a little bit different than them.”
In addition to the data, there’s the simulator that’s become popular for race preparation since testing is no longer allowed, but even it has its drawbacks.
“No matter how good it is, it still is never real life,” Briscoe said. “Some of the feel you have in the sim, it’s hard to replicate how it’ll actually feels in real life, just the timing of things is a little bit off in the sim.”
Briscoe said he probably ran almost 400 laps in the simulator on Wednesday, trying to get the rhythm he needed for Martinsville, but it was difficult.
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Denny Hamlin.
“I was telling our group (that) I don’t think it’s going to be this difficult in real life to kind of find that feel and that rhythm,” Briscoe continued. “I think the biggest thing is just trying to slow everything down and let the car do more of the work instead of trying to really hustle it and force it to do things it doesn’t want to do.”
Briscoe has focused this week on changing how he drives Martinsville. He notes he’s good on the short runs, but not on the long ones.
“How I drive the race track is going to be drastically different this weekend versus how I’ve driven it in the past,” Briscoe explained. “It’s been hard this week on the simulator trying to do that. I feel like this is the most different approach I’ve ever had for any of the race tracks we’ve gone to.”
A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association’s sports feature category. During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication’s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.