DARLINGTON, S.C. — A spot in the playoffs already secured, Chase Briscoe focused on a bigger prize when he talked with his wife a couple of weeks ago.
“This is really the first time I’ve ever legitimately thought I could win a Cup championship,” he told her.
Briscoe’s third Cup playoff appearance begins with tonight’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway (pre-race coverage begins at 5:30 p.m. ET on USA Network). The defending Southern 500 winner will start second, and join Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin on the front row.
Denny Hamlin will be joined on the front row by teammate Chase Briscoe, who won last year’s Southern 500.
Briscoe’s chances of repeating in this crown jewel event could be a result of what the team learned at Darlington in the spring.
The lesson was that the No. 19 team with crew chief James Small has the right package for this track and not to veer from it as the team did in the spring when Briscoe finished 28th after starting fourth.
“I think we got derailed a little bit here in the first race, honestly, chasing some of the things (Briscoe) wanted,” Small told NBC Sports. “We were just off a little bit on the intermediate program at that point in the year trying some stuff. I think this race and how we’ve approached it this week and all the work we’ve done is back to the fundamentals I feel that have made us good as a 19 team.”
Briscoe calls the spring Darlington race the team’s worst of the season and explains what went wrong.
“I run a really unique line (in Turn 1 at Darlington) compared to a lot of guys, I run really low,” Briscoe said. “We kind of got ourselves, I thought, in a bad spot definitely in the spring with how I was driving and the setup and stuff. It wasn’t meant to be doing that.”
The NASCAR Cup playoffs begin with tonight’s race.
The spring Darlington race was an example of a new driver/crew chief pairing needing time to develop. Briscoe joined the team this season, taking over for Martin Truex Jr., who retired from full-time Cup competition last season.
“I feel like earlier in the year we maybe didn’t know each other that well and were kind of listening a little bit to what he said and maybe that was getting us off path from what we fundamentally thought,” Small said those first few races with Briscoe. “And then I feel like we went through a stage where we just went back to doing what we felt was right. He adjusted more, got used to it and since we’ve been running better.”
In the final 10 races of the regular season, Briscoe won one race, finished second three times and had five top-five finishes. That’s helped build momentum in his first playoff appearance with Joe Gibbs Racing. Briscoe made the playoffs in 2022 and ’24 with Stewart-Haas Racing. He reached the round of 8 in 2022 and was eliminated after the Round of 12 last season.
Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott and Bubba Wallace are among a group of playoff drivers who began racing full-time in Cup between 2016-2022 making an impact in the sport.
“We need to go and perform in the playoffs,” Briscoe said. “That’s the difference now is that (at) SHR, did you want to get knocked out of the Round of 16? No, but if you did, there was nobody like, ‘Man, that was a disappointing season.’ They were still excited they made the playoffs. Where here (Joe Gibbs Racing), it’s almost like if you don’t make the Round of 8, that’s kind of a failure on the year and really the final four even, right?
“It’s just a different mentality. For me, I think we’re fully capable of making it to the final four. From a speed standpoint, I would say arguably we are one of the better cars kind of week in and week out, it’s just a matter of putting the whole race together.”