Last year at Phoenix Raceway, Chase Briscoe was reluctant to leave the race track.
He had just run his last race with his No. 14 team at Stewart-Haas Racing, not as part of the Championship 4 but as a driver for a team that was shutting its doors at season’s end.
It was the end of a dream for Briscoe and the beginning of another fraught with uncertainty.
“It is crazy, what a difference a year can make,” Briscoe said on Thursday during Championship 4 Media Day at the Phoenix one-mile track. “You go from being sad and down in the dumps… I don’t know, it’s just weird.
“We were the last people to leave last year, because we didn’t want it to end. We knew when we walked out of the tunnel that that group would never be together again. They literally kicked us out. They forced us to leave. We were here longer than the champions.
“But hopefully this year, I’m the one that’s here the longest again.”
In 2024, Briscoe won the Southern 500, the regular-season cutoff race. That earned him an unexpected berth in the Playoffs, but he was out in the Round of 12.
After moving to Joe Gibbs Racing this year, Briscoe has three victories, the most recent of which, at Talladega, propelled him into the Championship Race.
Briscoe’s Stewart-Haas group, however, hasn’t abandoned him.
“This week, all the 14 guys—we still have a group chat—they all were sending me motivational videos and trying to pump me up. (Former crew chief Richard) Boswell sent me a text this morning and sent me a video of all his kids wishing me good luck.”
Briscoe is the only one of the Championship 4 drivers who hasn’t raced for a NASCAR Cup title in the season finale. Even before he drove a JGR car for the first time, Briscoe knew expectations were high.
“I’ve raced against Joe Gibbs Racing, so I knew that, if everything went well, there was a very good likelihood that you’d be racing for a championship,” he said. “Year one—I’m not going to say it’s surprising, but it also I would say exceeded expectations for year one, for sure.
“It would mean a lot to do it in year one, just with everything, with Coach (Joe Gibbs) obviously taking a chance on me. Just to start our tenure off together winning a championship would be pretty cool, but it would certainly make the expectations going forward way harder.”
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