Joe Gibbs Racing doubled-down on its 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship opportunities over the weekend \u2013 now filling half the four-driver title field \u2013 first with a 60-win veteran still racing for his first series title and now the team\u2019s newest driver addition set to compete for his first career chance at one.<\/p>\n
Chase Briscoe pulled off a dramatic typically-Talladega last lap pass in overtime Sunday to claim the second of the four title-eligible positions in NASCAR\u2019s season-ending championship race \u2013 marking the first time in the 29-year old\u2019s career he will race for the big trophy. And he\u2019s got some familiar company in the quest already with his teammate 44-year-old Denny Hamlin taking the first spot in the title four with a win two weeks ago in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
And. \u2026 the odds look encouraging even beyond that for the Gibbs Toyota team. It\u2019s well on its way to a major title flip-of-the-script from recent years when its chief competitors Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 Chevrolet squad or the three-time defending champion Team Penske\u2019s Ford group dominated the team numbers in the title finale.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very possible the mighty JGR team could fill three of the four NASCAR Cup Series championship-eligible positions. Gibbs driver Christopher Bell leads the points standings with a healthy 37-point edge on the cutoff line with only Sunday\u2019s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway (2 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) left to formalize which four trophy contenders will race for the title.<\/p>\n
Bell finished eighth Sunday at Talladega, joining Briscoe as the only Playoff drivers in the race\u2019s top-10.<\/p>\n
The highest-ranked driver in the points standings will advance to the championship race and should a non-title contender win at Martinsville, then the two highest drivers will race for the big trophy.<\/p>\n
Currently Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 Kyle Larson is ranked fourth, a single point behind Bell. Regular Season Champion William Byron is ranked fifth (-38 points), followed by Penske teammates Joey Logano (-38) and Ryan Blaney (-47) and Hendrick\u2019s Chase Elliott (-62).<\/p>\n
\u201cFor our organization, today was just a huge day,\u201d team owner Joe Gibbs allowed, with a big smile Sunday. \u201cI appreciated the fact that Christopher [Bell] was able to get everything done that he needed to get done there. Ty [Gibbs] helping Chase [Briscoe] was a big deal. Toyota, our partner, you just can\u2019t say enough about them and what we\u2019ve done together. Just really appreciate it. It\u2019s a total team effort. As you know, in this sport it takes a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
It does. And JGR\u2019s effort Sunday shows it\u2019s ready to raise its game.<\/p>\n
Hamlin leads all drivers this year with six wins. Briscoe leads the series with seven pole positions. And Bell a four-race winner this season \u2013 including the Spring race at the Phoenix title venue\u00a0 \u2013 leads the team in recent championship eligibility with two appearances in the Championship Four in the last three years.<\/p>\n
Those three JGR drivers alone, account for 13 victories in the 34 races this year \u2013 almost double the total of Hendrick\u2019s (seven) and nearly triple the total of Team Penske\u2019s (five) trophy-haul.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if three JGR cars get in it, it\u2019s how do we execute and not screw it up,\u201d Briscoe said Sunday. \u201cIf we have a 75% chance even going there and winning it, one of us needs to win it. We won there earlier in the year as a company.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be the biggest thing, how do we put it all together and put a bow on what a good season that we\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n
As for Briscoe, the idea of having three teammates among the four title contenders is more reassuring that daunting. He says it doesn\u2019t change the way he races at all and only raises the expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s really a mind shift,\u201d Briscoe said. \u201cTruthfully more often than not, I know to beat them for a win, I\u2019m probably going to be going up against my teammates. So that doesn\u2019t really change. If I can\u2019t win, yeah, I hope that one of them win. I even told [his wife] Marissa that the other day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love to win the championship, but if I can\u2019t win, I hope it is one of my teammates. I genuinely want that for them. Whether it\u2019s Denny and everything that he\u2019s gone through and going through right now, or Christopher. Me and him have been friends since we were 11, 12 years old. I know how much he wants it, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, selfishly I want to win it. If not, I genuinely hope one of my teammates does win it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Gibbs Racing doubled-down on its 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship opportunities over the weekend \u2013 now filling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,10660,7574,13157,4384,12716,634,582,721,722,82,926],"class_list":["post-228339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chase","tag-chevrolet","tag-group","tag-hendrick-motorsports","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-racing","tag-series","tag-speedway","tag-sports","tag-toyota"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}