At the start of Sunday night’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, Chase Briscoe had only one way of making the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs — winning the race.
The soon-to-be Joe Gibbs Racing driver following the closing of Stewart-Haas Racing at season’s end still had work to do as he sat mired down the playoff grid, 144 markers out of the 16-driver postseason.
With a win needed to keep his championship hopes alive in the regular season finale, Briscoe turned in perhaps his finest performance since becoming a full-time Cup Series driver in 2022.
Briscoe tallied top-five stage points in each of the first two segments and was a contender throughout the entirety of the 367-lap race.
While he didn’t lead the most laps, 29, compared to Kyle Larson’s race-high 263, Briscoe led when it mattered.
He sealed the deal with a decisive three-wide pass from fourth to first with 26 laps to go. He never relinquished the lead, despite two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch breathing down his neck over the final 10 laps.
The theme from Briscoe’s race? Pressure.
From needing a win to secure a berth to the playoffs and knowing his time with his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team is dwindling down, Briscoe admitted he tends to rise above pressure.
“I think I definitely run better under heavy pressure,” Briscoe said. “For whatever reason, I’ve always been like that.”
Prior to a late-race restart, Briscoe’s crew chief, Richard Boswell, gave the Indiana native encouragement, stating the entirety of SHR was behind him.
“Yeah, when Richard told me that, I’m like emotional,” Briscoe began. “Everybody knows that. I started tearing up in the car thinking about how much was riding on my shoulders at that point.
“But yeah, I love that stuff. Like, I love the Game 7, heavy-pressure moment. For whatever reason, I feel like I do a lot better under those situations than not having a lot of pressure.
“Yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself just going into this week. Last week at Daytona (Fla.) was the worst race by, I mean, a mile I’ve ever raced in my entire career. I was embarrassed, so embarrassed,” Briscoe continued. “I texted Richard literally before we got on the plane. I said, ‘I don’t ever want to talk about this race again. We’re not going to talk about it this week. I promise you I’ll make it up to you next week.’
“Man, I knew it was going to be one of those do or die moments. We talked about it before the race today, this is the last bullet in the chamber. We knew this was going to be a really good opportunity for us based on how we raced in the spring. If we could get our car a little bit better, if we executed all night long, I knew we would be in the mix.
“We executed. And we were in the mix at the end.”
Now that Briscoe will have a shot at a championship, is he a legitimate contender despite SHR preparing to close in a few weeks?
He believes so.
“Yeah, 100 percent,” Briscoe said. “We’ve been shutting down since May, and they haven’t shut us off yet. Yeah, I think we’ll be totally fine.
“Obviously it’s going to be an uphill battle, but we feel confident about it.”