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Chase Briscoe On Not Winning Cup Series Championship: ‘It Stings A Little Bit’

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
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Chase Briscoe

Before Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series season finale at Phoenix Raceway, Chase Briscoe wasn’t a popular pick to beat out his three fellow Championship 4 drivers for the title.

But Briscoe, who’d already surprised a lot of folks by winning a career-high three races and making the Championship 4, hardly conceded defeat. In fact, he seemed to relish the role of championship underdog — which he played quite well and his fans seemed to love.

In the end, though, the stars simply didn’t align for Briscoe to secure an unlikely title in Year One with Joe Gibbs Racing.

What Went Wrong For Chase Briscoe At Phoenix?

In a word: tires. Chase Briscoe suffered not one, not two but three tires failures over the course of the weekend in Arizona. One occurred in practice. Two more came about during the race.

Thankfully for Briscoe, he somehow managed to avert disaster each time. But the total sum of his issues, coupled with the good fortune of others, proved too much to overcome.

After recovering from his original race-day rubber woes to actually battle two of his fellow Championship 4 drivers for the lead, Briscoe ultimately slipped to 18th at the checkered flag. Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson captured the title with a third-place finish as Briscoe’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin finished sixth as he missed out on the race win and the championship in devastating fashion.

Briscoe finished third among the title contenders, beating William Byron after the Hendrick Motorsports driver experienced a tire failure while running second with three laps left in regulation.

“Definitely, it’s a race of what could have been,” Briscoe said. “I feel like hopefully people felt like we were here and in contention. We weren’t average running position-wise up there a whole lot. Certainly, I felt like we had one of the strongest cars, for sure.

“If we could have not had issue after issue, we would have been in the mix. I thought we did everything right as far as pit stops, obviously car speed and balance. The tires just didn’t go our way.”

Chase Briscoe Saw Phoenix As A Missed Opportunity

Chase Briscoe believes his successes from this year, which included capturing a Cup Series-high seven poles, are just the beginning of what he will ultimately accomplish at Joe Gibbs Racing — one of the sport’s elite organizations.

At the same time, though, he’s not taking anything for granted.

“Hopefully, I can be in a lot more championship situations,” said Briscoe, who never made the Championship 4 in his four previous Cup Series seasons, all spent at Stewart-Haas Racing. “You’re never guaranteed anything in this sport. Especially from a speed standpoint, everything else.

“SHR, my rookie year, the year before, they won 17 Cup races. Then the downfall happened. You never know when that light switch can be. Yeah, you’re never guaranteed being here again.”

So, coming up short of a championship this year didn’t sit well with Briscoe — even if he was the underdog at Phoenix and made the most of a tough situation.

“It stings a little bit,” he said.

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
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