With two consecutive victories, Chase Briscoe has erased a 58-point deficit to standings leader Kyle Larson, jumping from eighth to fourth with four races remaining, and crew chief James Small said they can’t let up.
“I think we’ve got to step on their throats while we can,” Small said. “I’m not going to let off the throttle pedal right now.”
When asked if Briscoe was a step-on-someone’s-throat kind of guy, the Australian native laughed and said, “Definitely not.”
“He puts his helmet on and he’s silent, but he’s like a silent assassin,” Small said about Briscoe.
In Sunday’s Bank of America 400, Briscoe managed a tire that was cording in the closing laps to defeat Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell by a nose. The two drivers drag raced off the fourth turn to deliver the second closest finish in Charlotte Motor Speedway’s history.
“What an amazing run we’ve been on,” Briscoe said after earning his third victory this season and the eighth of his NASCAR Cup career. “My hero is Tony Stewart. He made a pretty unbelievable run, and, hopefully, we can do the same thing.”
David Jensen//Getty Images
Chase Briscoe (#19) beat Christopher Bell by a nose.
In 2011, Stewart claimed his third Cup championship by winning five of the 10 Chase races after having a winless regular season.
With 10 laps remaining in Sunday’s 267-lap Charlotte race, Briscoe possessed a comfortable 2.180-second lead over Bell. However, with five laps to go Bell had cut it to 1.811 seconds. Briscoe was in traffic and Bell was closing fast.
“All of a sudden I just noticed my car just quit turning,” Briscoe said. “Then after a lap or two, I realized that my right front was about to go down. We had been cording tires, at least the right front, the last couple runs.
“I just caught that pack of lapped cars and with the right front starting to cord I just started to get really, really tight. Truthfully, another lap, it maybe blows the right front with how much it was coming apart. I just couldn’t do anything. I was just kind of hanging on.”
On the final lap, Bell charged to the inside in turns three and four and as they drag raced off the fourth turn, Bell slammed into the side of Briscoe, knocking him into the wall, but Briscoe never lifted and finished 0.029-second ahead of Bell.
David Jensen//Getty Images
Chase Briscoe gets a hug from his son, Brooks.
“Of all the people that I could have raced against there to the line, Christopher is the most respectful guy in the garage,” said Briscoe, who now trails Larson by 65 points. “I knew he wasn’t going to do anything to me to wreck me. I love racing with Christopher because you always know you’re gonna get respect, and you can’t say that about some guys.”
Team owner Joe Gibbs said he watched his two drivers fight it out to the checkered flag, but he knew his blood pressure increased and his heartbeat accelerated.
“That’s always when I’m the most nervous, when a couple of our cars are up front because I know had bad Christopher wants to win, how bad Chase wants to win,” Gibbs said. “It (wrecking each other) can definitely happen when you get together. I always worry about it. It has happened to us in the past.”
Small calmly said, “We know how to make it interesting all the time.”
“I’m just glad they checked each other’s momentum enough, and we had enough to get across,” Small said.
A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association’s sports feature category. During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication’s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.