Forget the engineers, the hours spent on the sim and sitting in on competition meetings. Chase Briscoe may have found the secret to winning in the form of his 5-year-old son, Brooks, whose racing advice is refreshingly simple: “Press the pedal all the way down.”
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has won back-to-back races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, and he’s showing no signs of lifting. Briscoe is the only driver with multiple wins on 1.5-mile tracks this season, with three victories. Five other drivers have one each, so either Briscoe has figured something out or Brooks needs to start offering consultations. Reminder … the Bill France Cup will be raised by the eventually champion following a race at a 1.5 mile track.
Christopher Bell has also kept JGR in the mix, making the team’s recent success even more impressive.
Meanwhile, Denny Hamlin is the only Joe Gibbs Racing driver without a win in the last 10 races.
The No. 19 team has been just as impressive on pit road. All three of the fastest recorded four-tire pit stops, per Racing Insights, belong to Briscoe’s crew, and six of the 10 quickest stops during the Chase have come from them. The crew has also gone 15 consecutive races without a pit crew mistake.
Briscoe has made up 58 points on Larson over the last two weeks, giving the defending champion one more challenger to account for.
As the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Phoenix for the Freeway Insurance 500 (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), Briscoe’s looking to make it three straight wins at the track where he earned his first Cup Series victory in 2022.
With four races remaining in the Chase, he’ll have a chance to keep chipping away at Larson’s lead and prove that, sometimes, the simplest advice is the best.
Day’s Not Checking the Comment Section
Corey Day’s relationship with X hasn’t always been the warmest. Earlier this season, the young Hendrick Motorsports driver had his fair share of critics online.
“Corey Day is just a Temu Kyle Larson.”
“Holy cow, Corey Day might be one of the most overrated prospects in NASCAR.”
“Corey Day wins 20 percent of his races and wrecks the other 80 percent.”
At Charlotte, though, fans were chanting his name at the start/finish line. Funny how winning can change the soundtrack.
Day isn’t losing sleep over anyone’s opinions either. “I think it’s funny, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” he said in the Charlotte Motor Speedway media center. And after back-to-back wins, he’s got a pretty good reason to let the results do the talking.
The numbers are starting to make their own argument, too. Day is the first Hendrick Motorsports driver to win consecutive O’Reilly Auto Parts Series races since Kyle Busch in 2004. He’s also gained 85 points on Sheldon Creed over the last two races, turning a 92-point deficit into just seven as he heads to Phoenix Raceway for Saturday’s Timberland PRO 200 (7:30 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
— NASCAR —