This is one of four feature stories on the finalists — Denny Hamlin, Kyle Larson, William Byron and Chase Briscoe — competing for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship on Sunday at Phoenix.
Chase Briscoe cried the last time he competed in a NASCAR Cup Series season finale.
They weren’t happy tears. The tears flowed from his heart, as he had just completed the final laps in Stewart-Haas Racing history.
It wasn’t supposed to end that way for Briscoe, driving his hero Tony Stewart’s No. 14 car. He thought if he drove well enough, he would never leave SHR. Little did he know that SHR would leave him as a result of selling three of its four charters.
“I really thought I would retire in the 14 car,” Briscoe told FOX Sports on Tuesday. “I thought that was going to be the car that I would drive for the rest of my life. It was just a huge part of my childhood. And my hero drove it. If there was any car that I could drive in NASCAR, it was the 14.
“And with that chapter coming to a close, I remember sitting on the grid and literally crying and even my team guys crying on the grid after we started the engines.”
Chase Briscoe is prepping for the biggest moment of his career as he competes for the NASCAR Cup title.
The 30-year-old Briscoe, who, for a short period of time, thought he might not have another Cup ride, joined the beer toast (although he didn’t drink) as the organization celebrated its final ride. He had spent six years (four years in Cup) and had formed a tight bond with the team members.
Fast-forward a year later, Briscoe could experience the happiest moment of his career, as he has a shot to win the NASCAR Cup Series title. In his first year at Joe Gibbs Racing, Briscoe has three wins, a series-high seven poles and a series-high 15 top-five finishes.
Only one year out from the sadness of leaving SHR, it almost feels unreal.
“We knew when we walked back out of the garage and got on the airplane, that group was never going to be together again,” Briscoe said. “And just the emotions of that, and now a year removed, racing for a championship. It’s definitely crazy.
“When I was there doing that and spending that time with the Stewart-Haas guys, I didn’t think a year from now, I was going to be going here racing for a championship.”
Briscoe must finish better than Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and William Byron to win the title at Phoenix.
The success didn’t come right away for Briscoe, who will be making his first Champ 4 appearance against three drivers who have been finalists at least twice.
Go back to Phoenix in March for the fourth race of the season, and Briscoe qualified 30th and got in a wreck fewer than 100 laps into the event.
“I had no clue what I was doing,” Briscoe said. “Even as a team, I just feel like we’re at such a different place than where we were at the beginning of the year that I mean, truthfully, even if we ran every lap that race, I don’t think we would take a lot from it.”
After driving for SHR for the first 144 races of his career, Briscoe initially couldn’t grasp just how much better the JGR cars were than the ones he was used to. At the start of the year, he didn’t know how hard he could push the JGR car with a setup different from the one he had at SHR.
Chase Briscoe and Tony Stewart at a 2021 press conference.
“I’d been so used to going to a lot of these tracks my entire career and only being able to do a certain thing in it or carry a certain amount of throttle, and trying to carry that much speed, was just foreign to me,” Briscoe said.
“My car wouldn’t take it. I would just hit the wall or spin out. And now, my car just can take it. And it took me three or four months to learn what the new edge was. I was never even getting to the edge the first part of the season. I wasn’t pushing that car hard enough.”
By the time the team got to Pocono about midway through the year, Briscoe had hit his stride and won. He added victories at Darlington to open the playoffs — a race where he led 309 of the 367 laps. And then won again at Talladega.
By that Darlington win, his JGR crew chief, James Small, knew he had a driver who could win the No. 19 team’s first championship since Martin Truex Jr. won in 2017.
Chase Briscoe celebrates with his family after winning at Darlington.
“He’d shown continuous improvement through the year and Pocono was a good step in winning that race,” Small said. “He started getting more and more competitive or racing better, looking like he belonged up front.
“And when we went to Darlington and dominated the way we did, that’s when, for me personally, I really felt like, ‘Hey, this kid, actually, he can do it. He’s one of the good ones right now.’ That was very rewarding for us as a group to see and we put a lot of effort into it.”
Team owner Joe Gibbs seemed somewhat amazed at Briscoe’s quick success for a driver with dirt-racing roots known a little bit as a grinder — one who has taken advantage of opportunities that fell into place to continue his career.
“None of us expected it,” Gibbs said. “I don’t think anybody did. I didn’t hear anybody in the press say that was going to happen. I think it took us all by surprise.”
If Briscoe does win the title, he’ll likely think back to a year ago. He’ll certainly shed tears again but this time, tears of joy.
“I cry when I win in just a normal race, let alone a championship,” Briscoe said. “I’m a pretty emotional guy. So I would say, I will definitely. I would say the odds of it are like -2000 that I would cry if I win the championship.”
Another thing will remain the same as that beer toast a year ago. Briscoe does not drink alcohol, and he plans to stick to that policy even if he wins a Cup title.
No champagne?
“Probably not,” Briscoe said. “My wife, since we’ve been married, she’s like, ‘If you win the championship, you’ve got to drink.’ And even Noah [Gragson] and all my buddies are like, ‘If you win the championship, you’ve got to drink.’
“I don’t think I will. I’m not going to let that just change me.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
