{"id":951459,"date":"2026-10-30T04:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T04:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951459\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T04:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T04:18:11","slug":"chase-briscoe-explains-why-teammates-matter-less-in-modern-nascar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951459\/","title":{"rendered":"Chase Briscoe Explains Why Teammates Matter Less in Modern NASCAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s enjoyed success at a particular track isn\u2019t necessarily as valuable as in previous decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne 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\u2019re really good at and have a pretty good understanding of kind of how they get around there,\u201d Briscoe said. \u201cI think in today\u2019s world of Cup racing it doesn\u2019t matter as much now who\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NASCARSean Gardner\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin (#11) and Chase Briscoe duke it out at Iowa in August.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the biggest advantage,\u201d Briscoe said about teammates.<\/p>\n

Of course, Briscoe noted there also were disadvantages because \u201cyou try to mold everything based off them and their success, and you know naturally you do drive a little bit different than them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the data, there\u2019s the simulator that\u2019s become popular for race preparation since testing is no longer allowed, but even it has its drawbacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how good it is, it still is never real life,\u201d Briscoe said. \u201cSome of the feel you have in the sim, it\u2019s hard to replicate how it\u2019ll actually feels in real life, just the timing of things is a little bit off in the sim.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"NASCARJonathan Bachman\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was telling our group (that) I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be this difficult in real life to kind of find that feel and that rhythm,\u201d Briscoe continued. \u201cI 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\u2019t want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briscoe has focused this week on changing how he drives Martinsville. He notes he\u2019s good on the short runs, but not on the long ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow I drive the race track is going to be drastically different this weekend versus how I\u2019ve driven it in the past,\u201d Briscoe explained. \u201cIt\u2019s been hard this week on the simulator trying to do that. I feel like this is the most different approach I\u2019ve ever had for any of the race tracks we\u2019ve gone to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lettermark\"<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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\u2019s sports feature category.\u00a0 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\u2019s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin is always considered a favorite at Martinsville Speedway, having failed to finish only three races in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,782,325403,784,237154,1642,634,325402,273948,82,183339],"class_list":["post-951459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-232b0955-64a5-4d36-815a-44151d135389","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-nascar","tag-shorttitle-briscoe-teammates-matter-less-in-modern-nascar","tag-sponsored-false","tag-sports","tag-subsection-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951459","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=951459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}