CONCORD, N.C. — With a tire leaking air and the finish line a few feet away, Chase Briscoe did Kyle Larson a big favor on Sunday afternoon.
Briscoe’s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota collided with the No. 20 Toyota of teammate Christopher Bell near the entrance to the tri-oval, but Briscoe held on to win the Bank of America 400 by 0.029 seconds — the second-closet finish in Charlotte Motor Speedway history.
Clearly, Briscoe helped himself enormously with his second straight victory. He advanced two positions to fourth in the standings and trimmed his deficit to Larson, the Chase leader, to 65 points.
Briscoe’s win, however, also was a boon to Larson, in that it prevented Bell from moving into second place in the standings, some 30 points behind the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion.
Larson actually increased his lead from 40 to 49 points over second-place Denny Hamlin, who finished fifth on Sunday — one position ahead of Larson — and still lost ground to the leader because of a deficit in stage points.
The bottom line is that Larson actually expanded his advantage in the Chase over the course of three consecutive races on 1.5-mile intermediate speedways that were supposed to be the province of Toyota drivers.
In fact, Briscoe won two of the three — at Las Vegas and Charlotte — and finished second to Larson at Kansas, but the two Toyota drivers who could have eaten significantly into Larson’s lead, Hamlin and Bell, couldn’t find victory lane.
Indeed, in the Chase so far, serendipity has been riding shotgun in Larson’s No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
On Sunday, he started from the pole after a qualifying rainout according to NASCAR’s metric formula that blends the finishing position from the previous race with current standing in owner points.
Larson took full advantage, winning the first stage. He fell to sixth after the second stage restart but climbed back to fourth at the finish to earn 17 stage points for the event.
“The first stage played out exactly how we needed it to,” Larson said. “The cautions were kind of coming out right when I was about to get passed.
“The second stage was promising. I had that really bad start, but we fought our way back into the top-five and got good points there. Coming home with a sixth-place finish, all-in-all, I feel like we maximized our day.”
As the Chase has progressed, comparisons between Larson and crew chief Cliff Daniels and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team of seven-time series Jimmie Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus have become more prevalent.
Back in 2010, in a comment he later regretted, Kevin Harvick opined that Johnson and his team had a “golden horseshoe” residing where the sun doesn’t shine.
The way the Chase has played out so far might lead one to think that the horseshoe has been passed down to Larson and his No. 5 crew.
Next Sunday at Phoenix Raceway — a track that is neither his best nor his favorite — Larson will put his 49-point lead at risk. It’s a track where Chase Briscoe claimed the first of his eight career victories while driving a Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.
But it’s also the track where good fortune — in the form of timely late cautions — propelled Larson to both his series championships. Nevertheless, Larson doesn’t feel comfortable with his current margin in the Chase.
“No, I won’t feel comfortable until it’s over,” he said. “Obviously, Briscoe winning and having a good day — you can take big chunks out of it if you win.
“We’re going to go to some tracks where others are really good coming up, so we just have to keep putting together days like we did (at Charlotte). We weren’t the fastest, but we got good points.”
If Briscoe keeps winning, or if Hamlin and Bell catch fire, “good points” may not be enough to guarantee a championship.
But Larson will have his own excellent performance to rely on — and perhaps the golden horseshoe, if need be.
