When Chase Briscoe was named as the retiring Martin Truex Jr.’s replacement at Joe Gibbs Racing, it was perceived as a serviceable move but not a blockbuster signing.
While JGR was an excellent and upgraded landing spot for Briscoe, who was looking for a new ride in the wake of Stewart-Haas Racing’s closure, it’s not like other powerhouse teams were eagerly lining up to sign him. At the time, Briscoe said JGR was the only team he met with that didn’t ask him about bringing sponsorship money to get the job.
But maybe if everything went right at JGR, Briscoe could parlay his opportunity into finding a home there — figuring out a way to kick down the door after it seemed like he only had a foot in it, much like he’s done time and again throughout his remarkable and unlikely journey. If not, he’d just be keeping the seat warm for someone else as a temporary bridge from Truex to a splashier name.
Sure enough, Briscoe has been a terrific fit. He’s well-liked by his team owner, sponsor and crew. He has a growing fan base who appreciated his down-to-earth nature before but were wary of investing in a driver without sustained success. And now he’s running well and winning races — going back-to-back in the Southern 500 and leaving Darlington Raceway as the Cup Series points leader for the first time in his career.
He also did it in the most Truex of ways, throttling the field to the tune of a career-high 309 laps led — the most at Darlington since Dale Earnhardt Sr. in 1986 and the most in the Southern 500 since Bobby Allison in 1971.
But this season didn’t start out with the speed we saw Sunday night. When Briscoe left Darlington in the spring, he was 14th in the standings after a miserable 28th-place finish; to that point in the year, he had only three top-10 finishes in the first eight races and had led just nine laps.
Chase Briscoe knew he needed to perform in his opportunity with Joe Gibbs Racing. After Sunday’s win, he’s among the championship favorites. (Logan Riely / Getty Images)
Though Briscoe’s team paid lip service to having his back and him being “our guy,” Briscoe was skeptical it viewed him the same way as Truex. At practice for the Coca-Cola 600 in late May, Briscoe recalled walking over to crew chief James Small and explaining how the car was struggling with handling.
“Well, you’re not f—g driving it right, so it’s not going to,” Small responded.
The pressure was real for both men. Small needed to prove himself without Truex, especially after Truex went winless in two of his final three seasons. And Briscoe told reporters in his introductory news conference at JGR that, “If I don’t win, then the way I look at it is my career is probably over.”
“If I can’t perform at this caliber of a race team, then why would any other owner take a chance on me?” he said then.
But Briscoe finally found his footing with his newfound faster cars in the early summer and now has eight top-five finishes in the last 16 races. Briscoe has also scored the most points of any driver over the last 10 races, establishing himself as a legitimate title threat in his first year at JGR.
Sometime in the last couple months, Briscoe sensed the demeanor change within his team, too.
“I remember (one race) after practice and we were texting back and forth and (Small) was like, ‘The car is not capable of doing what you need it to do. We’ve got to get it better for you, and we will get it better for you,’” Briscoe told “The Teardown” podcast after Sunday’s race. “I’m like, ‘That’s different. I’ve never heard that before.’”
The initial hesitation wasn’t without justification for Small and the team engineers. At the beginning of the year, Briscoe would under-drive his car in qualifying and over-drive on the track in “making desperate moves” like he was still in an SHR car, Small said. So even though the crew said it had Briscoe’s back, the driver didn’t actually feel that way until more recently.
“Now it’s like, ‘We’re going to bat for you. We think you’re the best guy for the job,’” Briscoe said.
After Darlington, there’s even more mutual belief within the No. 19 team that it’s onto something special. The championship talk isn’t too far-fetched.
“A night like tonight really will give Chase confidence that he belongs,” Small said. “He’s told me he can feel people are racing him different now. He’s still relatively young in his career. Racing up front and competing for wins every week is not something that he’s done on a week-in, week-out basis.
“Over the last two or three months, he’s just gotten better and better and better. Tonight really showed that.”
A night to forget
Hendrick Motorsports picked an awful time to have its worst-ever Darlington race since expanding to a four-car team in 2002.
According to journalist Jonathan Fjeld, Hendrick had four other Darlington races in which it failed to record a top-10 finish with any of its cars — but none with results this far off. Given this was Race No. 1 of the playoffs, when Hendrick usually comes out with statement-sending speed, Sunday was perplexing.
Chase Elliott, whose No. 9 car was out to lunch for much of the race, somehow was Hendrick’s best-finishing car with a “top-last,” as Elliott called it — otherwise known as 17th place.
Kyle Larson was going to finish in the top 10, but he sustained damage from a restart stack-up at the start of Stage 3, and it apparently hampered his performance as he slid back to 19th place.
Regular-season champion William Byron, who dominated Darlington earlier this year, limped home to a 21st-place finish after never running well all night.
And Alex Bowman had a disastrous weekend from start to finish — qualifying poorly, getting caught up in a Lap 1 wreck, and then suffering through a bumbling pit stop in which his pit crew’s air hoses became disconnected. He finished 31st, two laps down.
After the checkered flag, Byron crew chief Rudy Fugle said on the team radio he was “embarrassed,” and Byron agreed the night was “terrible.”
“We didn’t do s— today,” Fugle said. “We’ve got to improve and get better and race our a— off every week or it’s going to be a long offseason.”
While Larson and Byron are still in a good points position thanks to their regular-season performance, Elliott and Bowman are not. And it’s uncomfortable for Hendrick going to Gateway this week, where the four-car team has combined for one measly top-five finish and three top-10s in the three Cup Series races there.
It’s far from time to panic yet, especially since Larson had a decent run going before his damage. But if Gateway doesn’t go well, there’s going to suddenly be a ton of pressure on NASCAR’s winningest organization heading to Bristol for the Round 1 elimination race.
Kyle Larson was running in the top 10 before late damage appeared to sink his chances. No Hendrick car finished better than 17th on Sunday. (Logan Riely / Getty Images)Toyota shines
If you’re looking for signs of strength to open the playoffs, look no further than the Toyota cars — which captured six of the top seven spots in the Southern 500 for the most dominant race in the manufacturer’s history.
It was the third top-four sweep for Toyota — but the other two came eight years ago, at a road course (Watkins Glen) and a short track (Bristol). This sort of power display at Darlington, and in the playoff opener — when you would think every team and manufacturer is bringing their best — is impressive, to say the least.
Perhaps even more notable was Toyota achieved the result with three different teams. Not only did JGR have fast cars, but 23XI finished second and sixth with its two playoff drivers (Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace, respectively) and Legacy Motor Club had top-fives with both of its full-time cars for the first time in team history.
We already knew two-time Southern 500 winner Erik Jones was a Darlington master, as he now has the fourth-best average finish there among active drivers. But to see him contend for the win along with teammate John Hunter Nemechek — who got his best career finish of fourth place — felt like a notable step.
Meanwhile, Chevrolet and Ford both saw none of their playoff cars finish in the top 10. Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger led the way for Chevy (fifth place) and RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher was the top Ford (10th).
Championship 4cast
Dang it. I told myself I wouldn’t do this again this year, not after getting burned by this segment in 2024.
I had Christopher Bell ranked No. 1 in these power rankings for nearly the entirety of the playoffs last season — until he failed to even make the Championship 4 after losing on the controversial race manipulation non-call at Martinsville. It was a frustrating look at how this playoff system can fail to reward not only the best drivers of the season, but even the best drivers of the final 10 weeks.
But we’ll try again this year, hopefully with better forecast results. Here are our current Championship 4 picks:
1. Briscoe (pre-playoffs: 4). Pretty obvious when the hottest driver of the summer goes out, dominates a crown jewel race on a career-best night and picks up seven more playoff points in the process.
2. Denny Hamlin (pre-playoffs: 3). Decent speed until a horrible pit stop, which dropped him to the back of the lead lap, but at least he salvaged a seventh-place finish out of it and is second in the standings.
3. Ryan Blaney (pre-playoffs: 2). A bad sequence of events showed how quickly things can go south. Blaney had to jam on the brakes during a pit stop when Carson Hocevar spun in front of him, then was mired back in traffic and got sandwiched between two Richard Childress Racing cars and spun, which caused damage underneath his car. He rallied to finish 18th, but it should have been a top-10 result.
4. Joey Logano (pre-playoffs: 1). Not a good start at all for the defending Cup Series champion, who said his team just “missed it.” He was oddly a non-factor at a track where his No. 22 car has often been a contender, finishing 20th. But that’s OK — Gateway is up next, and he could win there, so it’s not time to worry about this pick. Yet.
Honorable mention: Larson, Byron, Reddick, Austin Cindric.
(Top photo of Chase Briscoe celebrating Sunday’s win: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)