AVONDALE, Ariz. — Crew chief James Small points to the Southern 500 as the moment he knew that Chase Briscoe could win the championship. But for Briscoe, the moment the switch flipped for him occurred weeks earlier.
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It didn't even take a win for him to realize that he could break through in his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing.
"I would say there was a stretch around — I wanna say it was August — we were in second three weeks in a row," Briscoe said Thursday at Phoenix Raceway. "And that was when I was like, 'Man, if we can keep doing this...'
"At that point, we still didn't even feel close to our full potential, and we were running top five every race, throughout the whole race, and just getting finishes, and everything was just starting to click.
"And like I said, I felt like we weren't even to our full potential yet. So I felt like if we just kept building that to the playoffs, then we were gonna be in a really good spot. And throughout the playoffs, I still don't feel like we're at 100% per se, but we're way closer now than we were even in August."
This stretch didn't play out exactly as Briscoe remembers. It actually started at Sonoma Raceway in July as he finished second behind Shane van Gisbergen. One week later, he finished second at Dover Motor Speedway behind Denny Hamlin.
Briscoe closed out the month of July with a mostly strong run at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He won the pole and stage 1 but finished 18th overall as Bubba Wallace won. Briscoe then kicked off the month of August by finishing second at Iowa Speedway behind William Byron.
Timeline differences aside, this stretch showed that Briscoe would be a threat to win nearly every week of the Cup Series season, something that he couldn't say in 2024 or any other previous year.
The Cup Series is a different beast than other racing divisions. A driver doesn't simply hop into top-tier equipment, flip the switch, and then begin winning races.
Briscoe has openly acknowledged this during his first season with Joe Gibbs Racing. He had to learn a new team, a new OEM partner, and a different quality of car.
It wasn't a simple matter of going from Stewart-Haas Racing to Joe Gibbs Racing and contending for the title. In fact, Briscoe doesn't even believe that he would have been at this point in his career if he had started his Cup tenure with JGR.
"Truthfully, I'm glad that I had the four years of experience at SHR just because I have Cup experience, and I kind of know the ins and outs of Cup racing," Briscoe said. "...I still had races where I competed for wins and won at SHR's level, but it would have been really hard, I feel like, to step into this car, year one of your Cup career, and just go perform.
"Truthfully, just Cup racing in itself is so hard to go do. So it was kind of just the perfect storm. I had a couple years of experience in Cup, somewhat competitive equipment, and now it gave me the opportunity to obviously come over here and elite equipment and kind of show what I feel like I'm capable of."
Briscoe has now completed 35 points-paying races since making the switch to Joe Gibbs Racing and the No. 19 Toyota, and he has delivered a career season. All that's left is for him to do is go out and close it the campaign on a high note.
