{"id":951563,"date":"2026-10-30T06:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T06:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951563\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T06:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T06:18:13","slug":"jgrs-nascar-championship-hopes-come-down-to-martinsville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/951563\/","title":{"rendered":"JGR\u2019s NASCAR Championship Hopes Come Down to Martinsville"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers entered Talladega within 31 points of standings leader Kyle Larson, but with the Hendrick Motorsports driver\u2019s victory at the 2.66-mile track their only hope of claiming this year\u2019s NASCAR Cup championship rests with a win at Martinsville speedway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be lying if I felt like all of us didn\u2019t have the wind let out of our sails a little bit (at Talladega),\u201d Chase Briscoe said. \u201cIt\u2019s still very, very much possible, but you\u2019re going to have to do something pretty extraordinary. Even if you do go have two amazing days, you still have to have some help with the 5 car (Larson).\u201d<\/p>\n

The JGR contingent enters Sunday\u2019s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville with Denny Hamlin 73 points behind Larson in second. Then comes Christopher Bell 74 points in arrears and Briscoe 79 points back.<\/p>\n

\"NASCAR<\/p>\n

Jonathan Bachman\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just feels different going into this week than in Talladega, but ultimately, you still have to go win the race,\u201d Briscoe said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t go win the race, it doesn\u2019t really change anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The maximum number of points a race winner can receive is 76 points. That\u2019s winning both Stages, the race, and a point for posting the fastest lap.<\/p>\n

Briscoe said watching Larson go from 11th to first in less than a lap to win the Talladega race provided him with the \u201ccraziest range of emotions I feel like I\u2019ve ever experienced.\u201d He described Larson\u2019s Talladega victory as \u201cdefinitely not an ideal situation.\u201d Briscoe even called what Larson has been able to do, winning three of eight Chase races and posting an average finish of 6.5, \u201camazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NASCAR<\/p>\n

Karl Anderson\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the 5 group has been able to do if they can sustain that for the next two weeks, they deserve to be the champion,\u201d Briscoe said.<\/p>\n

Still, Briscoe believes this year\u2019s championship is within his reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were able to win two races back-to-back earlier in the Chase, I basically cut that deficit off in two races, and that\u2019s with the 5 car having two \u2026 top-five runs,\u201d Briscoe continued. \u201cEven in those two races we won back-to-back, the second one we didn\u2019t even have a clean sweep day. It\u2019s just you have to win this weekend. That\u2019s the big thing. I\u2019m still going in with the approach that I can definitely win the championship. In pro sports in general\u2026 anything can happen.\u201d
\n
<\/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":"Three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers entered Talladega within 31 points of standings leader Kyle Larson, but with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,782,325429,784,237154,1642,634,325428,273948,82,183339],"class_list":["post-951563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-0392cb75-c268-498b-b7fd-5c4af256a42e","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-nascar","tag-shorttitle-jgr-nascar-championship-hopes-fall-to-martinsville","tag-sponsored-false","tag-sports","tag-subsection-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951563","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=951563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}