Chase Briscoe saves and air blocks to Pocono Cup win

Chase Briscoe has finally won at Joe Gibbs Racing and this is the least fun it has ever been in Victory Lane.

It’s complicated but Briscoe now has three wins but the first two, that came with Stewart-Haas Racing at Phoenix and in the Southern 500 were enjoyable because they felt like upsets, and now winning in the expectation at Joe Gibbs Racing.

It took 17 races and the pressure had started to mount leading into Pocono Raceway this weekend.

“You come to JGR, and (Christopher) Bell has won three races,” Briscoe said. “Denny has won three. Me and Ty (Gibbs) hadn't won yet. Last couple weeks especially, it’s just been like this huge weight on my shoulders, unlike anything I've ever experienced before.

“My wife is, ‘What is going on with you’ and ‘I'm like, I have to win. I don't think you realize how bad it is if we don't win a race and lock into the Playoffs.’

“So now, I feel like I honestly weigh a hundred pounds less already. Literally when I was (signing) my contract with JGR, I remember them showing me the stat thing about how about out of 40 attempts for (the) Playoffs, they have made it 38 times. The expectation is if you don't make the Playoffs, you're not going to be in this car anymore.”

The only thing Briscoe says he can compare it to was his ARCA championship season in 2015 with Cunningham Motorsports and crew chief Chad Bryant where they were expected to have that level of success.

“This is unlike anything I've ever had in my career,” Briscoe said. “The only expectation I would say is being teammates with Kevin (Harvick) but even when I was there, Kevin wasn't really winning either. That expectation was always there with Kevin but it wasn't necessarily guys winning week in and week out.”

So he said winning twice at SHR felt like a pleasant surprise, or a bonus.

Also, consider that out of all the potential free agents available to have signed with JGR to replace the retiring Martin Truex Jr., Briscoe was signed totally on merit. ‘The Coach’ signed Briscoe on character and projected ability to mesh with crew chief James Small.

But Small also said they have asked a lot of him in making the transition to a team where there are four championship aspirations every season too.

“From where he came from, there wasn't much accountability,” Small said. “Nobody was holding his feet to the fire. That's probably been a big wake-up call for him. We expect a lot. We demand perfection.

“That's the personalities on this race team: we're going to kill our grandma to win the race. That's probably a little different. He is a different personality type, especially to me, a couple of people on the team.  It's been a challenge.”

Even though every Cup Series car is technically the same, except how they are put together, Briscoe said he immediately noticed the performance difference at Gibbs. He’s had to relearn how to drive a championship caliber car and that’s to say nothing of the physical fitness regime Toyota has put him on.

Joe Gibbs Racing is literally rebuilding Briscoe.  

“We're still a work in progress, we're far from being where we think we can be,” Small said. “At this point he's meeting our expectations. I still expect a lot from him. He's only going to get better, I know.”

Briscoe had won four poles already but hadn’t closed out on a win. His season has been solid thus far, but again behind the standard set by Hamlin and Bell, and the gap wasn’t lost on him.

“I mean, I read the Internet,” Briscoe said. “People are like, ‘Why would they put that guy in?’ Even when I won three poles in a row, not winning the race, people are trashing (me). I knew we were more than capable. I knew myself that I was capable. You never really know until you go do it, right? For us to be able to come here, it's certainly nice to get that monkey off your back.”

Coach Gibbs said this victory was just the first checkbox is validating why Briscoe is now in this car.

“It's super special, just humbling first off that out of all the people coached picked me,” Briscoe said. “I'm sure there were a lot of people scratching their head. Even internally, when he said, ‘Hey, I think we should go with this guy.’ For him to feel validated is a great thing, as a driver to know your boss is happy with you.

“If you look at the list of Hall of Famers that got to drive for Coach Gibbs, honestly the fact I'll be on that pretty short list is pretty special. Literally as a kid, I talk about it all the time, I would play my sprint car game in a Joe Gibbs Home Depot uniform. Just being a diehard Tony Stewart fan. Being able to deliver a victory for Coach is pretty special.”

How it was won

While Briscoe and the No. 19 team won the race, and earned all the meaningful vibes that came with it, their triumph also took all manner of twists and turns to manifest.

Hamlin seemingly had the fastest car on pace. Brad Keselowski made a mistake, pitting into a closed pit road during a caution period on Lap 54, which had him off sequence. However, a very competitive car plus a combination of fuel saving and jumping the second stage left with 15 more laps of fuel than everyone else.

At the same time, Briscoe was amongst the first to short pit right before a caution on Lap 78 and that gave him track position to go out and win the second stage. Keselowski chose to run his penultimate green flag run long and was called down pit road, to his protest, right before a caution on Lap 125 for a Shane Van Gisbergen crash.

That forced Keselowski to come down pit road after most of the field had already pitted, trapping him behind those who short pit. At the exact same time this was playing out, Briscoe was told by Small that ‘we are fucked on fuel, Chase,’ because the driver left the stall too early.

“So typically I knew I was going to be waiting on fuel,” Briscoe said. “When we do that, typically the queue for me to go is when we drop the jack. James told me ‘you're going to go on me, we're not going on the jack.’

“As the tires got done, I knew we were sitting there waiting on fuel. I started revving the engine up so I wouldn't stall it when I left. I think James said, ‘Wait’ and as soon as I heard anything, I just went.

“I knew right away when I came out, the next lap, I knew Denny had pitted the next lap, they were a full straightaway behind me. I knew I was probably not in the best of shape. I instantly started saving fuel down the straightaways.”

So the caution for SVG that burned Keselowski, saved Briscoe.

Briscoe was nine laps short of the distance leaving pit road. The caution gave him a couple of laps back but he still would need to simultaneously save fuel while also fending off Hamlin, Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott behind him.

He was very fortunate in that this was single groove Pocono in the NextGen car. Every time Briscoe would back his entry up in the corner to save fuel, Hamlin would get a run but just get aero tight as soon as he got into the dirty air off the back of the No. 19 car.

“I tried the best I could to make runs at him,” Hamlin said. “I would back off, cool everything down to make another run and as soon as I would get to one or two car lengths, it would just heat the tires up and I couldn’t make a move on him.

“Truthfully, I thought he would run out of gas. Truthfully, we were just the next best on our strategy and I thought it was the right strategy but just got a little unlucky with them pitting when they did because that let them flip the field and get up front and check out.”

Briscoe certainly didn’t deny the fortune and the reality of Pocono with this car.

 “The first stage I think we ran fourth or third or something like that,” Briscoe said. “We pitted. I came out 15th. I was stuck in 15th. I had nothing I could do. As soon as we pitted and I came out in clean air, I was really, really fast. My car drove great.

“That's Cup racing everywhere we go. Clean air is king. Dirty air is not good for you. Here, you can dictate so much when you're that lead car. I knew when I got clean air I had to do everything I could to keep it. If I was going to second, I would never pass the guy back.”

So all Hamlin could do was try to run Briscoe out of gas.

“He was lifting early into (Turn) 1 so I just tried to stay close enough to not allow him to lift early,” Hamlin said. “If he lifted early, I would be right there. I couldn’t get the balance of my car to handle the way I needed it to in clean air.”

All Briscoe had to do, to a degree, was mirror block to keep Hamlin in his wake.

Elliott, who went on to finish fifth told Frontstretch.com to ‘just wait’ and ‘you’re going to hear a lot more about it,’ regarding the dirty air.  

As for Keselowski, who faces must-win odds to make the playoffs, his reaction to the caution that denied him the win?

"Expletive, expletive," and "one of those deals."

23XI brake woes

NASCAR

There was a bit of a fire alarm fire at 23XI Racing as both Riley Herbst and Bubba Wallace suffered identical right front brake failures on Lap 42 and 54 respectively. Tyler Reddick was called into the garage so their car could make changes to prevent that outcome.

They seemed to have an idea what they were doing with their cooling package because it saved Reddick from crashing but also caused him to finish 32nd and one lap down.

“I’m sure we’ll look into it tomorrow and figure it out,” Hamlin said of the team he co-owns with Michael Jordan.  

The outcome was especially frustrating for Wallace as it placed him just second above the playoff cutline, now just 29 points to the good with nine races remaining.

“Yep, not good,” Wallace said. “Man of few words today.”

Even Reddick, who still has a 107 point lead over Buescher, Wallace and Alex Bowman to the cutline, lost some valuable real estate due to the issues.

Playoff push

So the Buescher, Wallace, Bowman and Preece points battle is one thing to monitor. And from that standpoint, Allmendinger, Kyle Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Michael McDowell all had the kind of days that most reasonably place them into must-win territory.

Busch was involved in a crash. McDowell suffered a brake failure and Stenhouse was caught on the wrong side of strategy too.

So there are a lot of drivers looking to replicate the Harrison Burton and Briscoe buzzer beating wins over the final two regular season races last year.

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