Chase Briscoe Finding His Groove at Joe Gibbs Racing, Eyes Continued Climb

DARLINGTON, S.C.: Riding the momentum of consecutive top-10 finishes at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Martinsville Speedway, Chase Briscoe heads to Darlington Raceway for Sunday’s Goodyear 400 as the track’s most recent winner.

Last fall, Briscoe turned heads with a memorable win in the Cook Out Southern 500, delivering Stewart-Haas Racing’s final NASCAR Cup Series victory.

Now with SHR shuttered, he’s looking to build new memories as part of the powerhouse Joe Gibbs Racing organization.

Piloting the No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry, Briscoe is eyeing his first win with JGR at one of his favorite tracks — famously known as “Too Tough To Tame.”

“I feel like of all the race tracks we go to, this (Darlington Raceway) is definitely one as the driver, you feel like you make a little bit more of a difference,” Briscoe said Saturday at Darlington Raceway.

“You know, it’s still very car-dependent for sure, but as a driver, I feel like this is one of those tracks that’s kind of similar to Homestead (Homestead-Miami Speedway) where you can carry it multiple positions because what you do inside the race car is constantly changing.

“Nobody’s car is driving good, there’s just things you can do in the car to find more than a tenth sometimes even two tenths, whereas at another tracks, you’re just very hand-tied by what you’re doing inside the race car.

“So, this track is definitely one of those tracks where you can do different things in the race car and I feel like this is also track where you see guys that typically run well here their entire career just because there’s little things about this race track.”

With eight Cup Series starts at Darlington and an average finish of 14.4, Briscoe knows what it takes to put himself in contention for his third career Cup victory.

“I would say for me the hardest thing is just been trying to understand the balance of the short run versus long run, and how hard to go at the beginning to not burn yourself up at the end.

“Still definitely don’t have that figured out, but I feel like it’s always kind of been my biggest challenge here and felt like that, especially in the Xfinity Series; I would be extremely fast in the short run, but I would pay for it in the long run.

“Just trying to do as much as I can to study you know the guys like Denny Hamlin and other guys that are so good, always here on the long run. So that’s kind of, I feel like my biggest challenge at this place, but you know, there’s a lot of challenges about this place as well.”

Sitting 12th in the Cup Series standings heading into the eighth race of the season, Briscoe is looking to build on what he’s described as a “B-minus” performance so far for himself and the James Small-led team.

After earning his third top-10 of the year in last weekend’s 400-lap battle at Martinsville, the Mitchell, Ind., native understands where improvements are needed — and he’s confident the team can deliver in the weeks and months ahead.

“I would say we’re, I don’t know, B-minus,” said Briscoe would asked to evaluate his season so far. “I think we knew there was going to take a little bit of time. Truthfully, just trying to learn each other and the car’s driving different. I would say that we’ve left a lot of points on the table, whether it’s stage points and even finishes.

“Like the first four, five weeks of the season, I felt like we were fifth-to-eighth-place car and when you would look at the metrics post-race, it would show that we were fifth-to-eighth-place car, but we would finish you know 17th or 14th or DNF (did not finish) at Phoenix (Raceway).

“We never really got to have the results I felt like that would pair with our speed, where the last two weeks, I feel like we’ve ran where we should around almost every single week — inside the top-10, getting some stage points.

“I think that’s the encouraging thing for me right now is knowing that we are not firing on all eight cylinders as far as being completely dialed in.”

Even if Briscoe isn’t quite firing on all eight cylinders just yet, the potential is undeniable for the No. 19 team once they’re able to put all the pieces together.

“I know that I’m still not at 100% from a standpoint of understanding what I need right now, and we’ve still been a fifth-to-eighth-place car fairly easily I feel like. Once we get it tuned in and figured out what we need, I feel like we’re going to be really good.

“That’s been just the hard part is the beginning part of the season is James (Small) just trying to even understand what is the perfect feeling race car for me.

“I feel like we’ve really kind of clicked with that, honestly even just this week, we’ve had three or four examples now of the percentage of delta and setup is X percent and it’s been the same three or four times.

“It’s Homestead, it’s Martinsville, it’s on the simulator this week and it’s very consistent now. So now they can say, ‘Okay, when we go to Bristol next week, you know this is what Martin (Truex Jr.) ran, we probably need to be X percent, you know, whatever off of that, and we should be in a pretty good spot.’

“So, I feel really good about the next couple weeks, and yeah, hopefully we can just continue to get better.”

Follow Chris Knight on X (Twitter) @Knighter01 or email at [email protected].